


Fate and Fear

by fowl68



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Backstory, Children, Concentration Camps, Death, Dubious Morality, F/M, Families of Choice, Feminist Themes, Gen, Growing Up, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Non-Chronological, Paralysis, Physical Therapy, Racism, Rebellion, Religion, Renegades, Sibling Love, Slavery, War, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 12:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5585083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowl68/pseuds/fowl68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Botta may have been ready to die for an ideal for most of his life, but he had never thought that it could make him happy until Yuan had found him. Until he'd given him a home with the Renegades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fate and Fear

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been in progress for quite a few months now. i wanted to explore Botta's character more, but he has such limited screentime that I felt the need to expand my lens a bit.

* * *

_Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; That honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; That power and money, money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies. You remember that, boy._  
 _Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in."_  
 _-Uncle Hub (Secondhand Lions_ )

* * *

Botta has a habit of waking early. As in, before dawn, early. When he tells people this, they always sound horrified, but to him, it's not a big deal. He's been waking up that early practically of his life. His internal clock is already set to it, and unless he is down with the flu or something worse, he is always awake to see the sunrise.

Yuan has never commented on it like others have. He just accepts it with the ease that he accepts most people's habits, and is always sure to brew an extra coffee for him. It actually works out for him most of the time. As he doesn't need sleep, Yuan works around the clock on various projects, but he always knows that if he needs assistance or a second opinion, Botta has a very wide availability.

One of the newbies—who are usually put on the extreme shifts because no one wants those—sees him as he's coming off of the night shift. Marc is a good kid—Botta says kid, but really, Marc is turning thirty in a few days—who'd gotten unofficially married two years ago, out in the tiny village near Thoda before his wife had been killed in an earthquake. They didn't happen often in that region—those are usually reserved for Hima and Iselia territories—but that one had been especially strong.

"You're still awake, sir?" Marc asks. His eyes are going red from lack of sleep. "I didn't know you were scheduled tonight."

"I'm not. I just woke up half an hour ago."

Marc's blue eyes go wide and he has to check his watch a few times. "This early? Can you not sleep?"

Botta has to go through this _a lot_. "No, I slept fine." The sleep had been restful; the amount hadn't been. He'd gotten to sleep near midnight, helping Yuan with a glitch in the computers. "I'm always up around this time. It's a habit."

"A habit?" Marc laughs. "Were you raised by vampires or something? Had to wake during the night?"

"Close. Fishermen."

"No shit? You were a fisherman?"

"Fishermen, dock workers—anything that had to do with sailing and the ocean, my family was there."

"You don't talk like it. Like a sailor, I mean. You sound so posh, I thought you were from Asgard or something."

"Mm. Six generations of my family have been in Palmacosta."

"Huh. No kidd—" Marc interrupts himself with a yawn. "Okay, so I'm gonna turn in."

"I think that's a good idea. The corridor is not the most comfortable place to sleep."

Marc grins a little. "The voice of experience?"

"Good _night_ , Marc." Marc has the ability to keep talking, constantly. Usually, Botta doesn't mind, but right now, all he wants is his first coffee of the morning.

"Good night, Botta."

* * *

Botta knows why it's difficult for Marc to picture him as a sailor. The Botta that Marc knows, that most everybody in the Renegades knows, is someone who isn't loud, whose words are too educated, whose knowledge of technology is too great for a common sailor.

He'd grown up in Palmacosta. Six generations of family, since Palmacosta had been a little village on the coast the size of Izlood, had lived in Palmacosta. His father is a dock worker, his grandfather captaining his own fishing vessel. His mother is a delicate thing with strong, powerful hands from helping her father haul up the catches when she'd been a teenager. These days, she sings at one of the half-elf inns out on the docks four nights a week.

They—all of them, Botta's entire _clan_ —lives in boxy apartments all stacked up on top of one another. Their home had literally grown with the town, so while other families mostly shared the apartments with other families, they had this veritable tower all to themselves. Botta's family is at the very top apartment. His great-grandmother—steadily going blind, but still able to make the warmest blankets—lives at the very bottom with one of Botta's uncles to make sure she's safe. It goes up the generations after that, with his grandparents living below them.

Botta grows up in a room that had been added on at the last moment—his youngest sister had been quite the surprise for his parents—and it sways and creaks in the winds. If one were to look at this little room from the outside, it would look like it's going to fall at any moment. His sisters and his parents have the other two bedrooms.

Botta's great-grandfather dies when he's nine years old. It's nothing that they hadn't seen coming. After all, he'd been pushing a hundred-and-thirty, which is a good old age for a half elf. There are some who have managed to live to be two hundred, but those are much more rare.

His great-grandfather is a strong man, always had been. Even on his deathbed, he doesn't quite manage to look frail. Botta sits on the edge of the bed, swinging his heels. His great-grandfather is an intelligent man, a learned man. He'd studied hard before having to quit school to take care of his family.

"Family should come first," Botta remembers his great-grandfather telling him. "But please, don't waste your opportunities like I did. I could have gone back, you know. To school. There were universities for people like us back then."

_(He'd been too young to properly understand, back then, but it wouldn't take long for Botta to get it. Half-elves were lesser, in terms of society. Less important. Their schooling only went to age sixteen, and most didn't even finish. Botta looked at his family, full of fishermen and sailors, and he thought of his great-grandfather's words and he knew which path he would choose early on)_

His oldest sister, Sirin, is a year younger than him, and he knows she can go far. They take the same classes together, and her grades are better than his. He has to ask her help often with biology. The teachers don't treat Sirin the same as they do him. They think that she's wasting her time, studying as much as she does. She's a woman, which apparently makes her unable to do sums or learn basic chemistry.

"It's insulting!" Sirin rages one day on their way home. "It's sexist and utterly _ridiculous_! Like there's something about the fact that I don't have a cock between my legs that means that I'm automatically less intelligent!"

Some of the neighbors are staring, but Botta just hides a smile. Not because he's laughing at his sister—no, he completely agrees with her—it's just that he likes how proud his sister is, how unashamed she is. She'll do great things one day, he thinks, and he can't wait to see it happen and laugh in their neighbors' and teachers' faces.

She's still going when they reach home—Sirin has a gift for rants—but their mother shushes her as soon as they walk in the door.

"But Mama, you should have heard the stupid teacher going on today—"

Their mother crosses her arms, eyebrows raised. All of them know better than to argue with _that_ look, so Sirin's mouth snaps shut. "I already heard, Sirin."

"Oh, did he come by to tell you that?" It's one of the problems of living in a community where everyone knows everyone. Their teacher lives three streets down, with his wife, who cooks at the restaurant that her father owns.

"Yes, he did."

Sirin falters at their mother's expression. "Wh—so why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're a young lady now, Sirin! You cannot let your temper escape you!"

Botta drops his schoolbag by the door, inching around them. Sirin is turning fourteen in a few weeks and for the past few months, her and Mama have been at odds. She's nearly finished with school, but Mama says that she should be working on finding a husband, someone to take care of her when her and Papa are gone.

Botta's youngest sister—the seven year late surprise—Olanya shuffles out of her bedroom, blanket about her shoulders. She had stayed home sick today. Botta kisses her forehead in greeting, holding his lips there to take her temperature. Still a bit feverish, though her temperature had gone down since this morning.

He glances down. "Where are your socks, Olanya? You're sick."

Her nose wrinkles. "It's too hot to wear socks."

"Doesn't matter. You're sick, you wear socks. That's the rule."

She grumbles, but obeys, going back to her room to find socks. Or just to get back in bed. Either one works. Botta winces as the argument behind him escalates. His family doesn't raise their voices when they're angry, not really. _(They used to tease Sirin, telling her she was adopted because she was so loud and in everyone's faces. Botta stopped using that to tease her a few years back)_ Their arguments are more a matter of tone, ranging from icy to acidic and everywhere in between.

Mama had started dinner already. There's rice in a pot and vegetables half-chopped on a cutting board. Botta picks up where she had left off, letting the repetitive movements of the knife drown out the argument.

At some point, he's not sure when, Mama comes and starts descaling some fish. "…Am I being unreasonable?" she asks.

Botta glances at her. _(Most kids tended to think that their mothers were the most beautiful women in the world. Botta hadn't thought that for many years. His mother just looked tired to him; tired and like a ghost from a bygone era, with makeup cracking and washing away)_ "About Sirin?"

"She's only a girl. I don't want her to ruin her chances for happiness with what she's doing. Boys don't like smart girls."

He wants to tell her that she's smart too, and look at what a life she has. But Botta knows that Mama's smarts and Sirin's smarts are two different things. "Have you considered that maybe _you'll_ ruin her chances for happiness by keeping her from doing what she loves?"

"Work is not everything."

Botta presses his lips together, trying to think of a way to make her understand. "Mama…if someone told you that you had to choose between your music or your husband, which would you pick?"

It's a cruel question, and he knows it. She stares at him with her big brown eyes like he's betrayed her. "My husband."

"Even if it meant you could never sing again?"

"…Yes."

Botta looks back down at the vegetables. His hand had stopped a while ago, the knife limp in his hand. "That's where Sirin's different. She doesn't want a family, doesn't want to be a housewife. Maybe someday she will, but—"

"But by then she will be too old, Botta! Who will want her for a wife then?"

"If they can't appreciate her for her passion, for her determination and intelligence, is that really the kind of person you want her to be married to for the rest of her life?" Botta demands. "She deserves someone who will love her for _all_ of her."

"Get out," she orders quietly.

"Mama—"

"Out."

* * *

Botta grows up under Desian rule. It's not a surprise. All of Sylvarant does. Being the only real port this side of Sylvarant, all of their deliveries come through this way, so the Desians are a constant presence. They tend not to bother half-elves much, other than recruiting at the schools, and occasional door-to-door visits. It's the humans they go for, and Botta can't help the satisfaction that curls in his gut when he spots the Desians harassing them.

Botta's known a few people who've signed up to join the Desians. Quite a few from school, although depending on the times, the older sons and fathers will sign up as well. Desians pay good money, even though no one really knows the details of what goes on at the ranches.

So when Sirin sits him down with some tea and says, "I'm joining the Desians," it's hard to blame her.

Botta tries, though. He doesn't have to _like_ humans to know that what's going on in the ranches isn't right. "Are you sure that that's the best idea? I mean—"

"What choice do I have, Botta? Stay here and just…waste away?"

He pressed his lips together. Sirin is brilliant; he's known that for a long time. He also knows exactly what it's like here. Well, anywhere. He hasn't heard of there being much call for genius half-elves anywhere. The humans certainly don't want them.

"The Desians are my best chance," Sirin says. "They need all the scientists and chemists that they can get. I would be able to _do_ something with my life. And it would make it easier on you and Mama. There would be more money coming in."

_(Botta's father was killed when he was seventeen in a hurricane. Swept away by enormous waves. His body was never found. Since then, Botta had taken his place working on the docks to bring money in. He didn't like the job, and he found himself sinking into the same place his great-grandfather ended up in. Family was a family tradition)_

At the end of the day, what convinces Botta is not her—admittedly well-thought out—arguments. It's the look in her eyes, determined and a little desperate. He sighs and says, "Okay. Not that you were gonna wait for my permission, but okay."

She nearly knocks him off the chair with the force of her hug, and he wraps his arms tightly around her. His brave, wonderfully smart little sister.

* * *

The Renegades are taught how to fight, alone and as a group. Training takes place either at night or in the early morning because the desert is unforgiving in its heat. Usually, it's outside, but depending on what's being taught, they'll train inside too.

Yuan is always present for the trainings. He isn't exactly a patient teacher, but he's a good one, always taking the time to work with his comrades to make sure they understand what they're doing. Botta helps out often too, but not always.

"You think you've learned everything?" Yuan asks once, a challenging smirk on his face.

"No. But neither have you." Botta has learned where the lines are, knows when he can tease, when he can protest.

Yuan snorts. "Touché. Ready to back that up?"

Sparring with Yuan is stressful in the fact that Botta can track him with his eyes, but he's not always fast enough to keep up with him. Yuan knows exactly how to push Botta's buttons, how to get close enough to Botta's space to set off the alarm bells, but not actually be within reach.

Still. Botta has always loved a challenge and Yuan certainly presents that. Not that Botta has ever actually beaten him, but he lasts longer than most do before he ends up flat on his back with a blade pointed at his throat.

_(Yuan had told him about the War, even if it was only a little bit. He'd mentioned little details here and there over their forty years of acquaintance. He knew that the traits that had gotten Yuan through the War were dark things. Instinctive, terrible things, but Botta also knew that Yuan had found ways to turn those traits into positive things, had learned how to deal with them and thus was better equipped for when his Renegades—for they were his, unequivocally—came home shell-shocked and woke in the night screaming)_

* * *

Botta doesn't join the militia. Not officially anyway. He stays working on the docks, loading and unloading cargo, and shooing away stowaways. At twenty-two years old, Botta is the unofficial head of the dock workers. Officially, it's a different guy, but everyone knows that Botta does a better job. He makes sure everyone gets paid on time, with their proper wages, makes sure everything is organized, and that the inventory is kept updated regularly. He deals with Desian inspections with folded arms and an unimpressed look.

But when the Desians or the humans get rowdy? He's the one that breaks up the fights. Not that Botta usually has to deal too much with humans. They tend to use their own docks on the other side of town. The militia hardly needs a presence in the docks because they know that Botta and the men that work under him are always ready to keep the peace.

Sirin had left four years ago for the ranch in Asgard, where the foremost research is being done—or so she'd told him. He still gets letters from her every few months, but she hasn't come back home, not even for Celsius Week. Botta can't really blame her. There isn't a whole lot to come back to.

Olanya drops out of school early. She shrugs at the look that Botta gives her. "I'm not a brainiac like you or Sirin. And I'm fine with that."

"So what are you going to do?" Botta asks, trying not to be offended on her behalf. This is her choice.

She shrugs, pushing her hands through her thick, frizzy hair. "I'm not sure. Maybe join the Church?"

"Of Martel?"

She tosses him an annoyed look. "Is there another Church? Of course of Martel."

Botta snorts a little. "I can't imagine you being a nun, honestly." His youngest sister is a flirty one.

"You _can_ join the Church without being a nun, you know that, right? I could be a priestess."

Of the three of them, Olanya always has been the more religious one. They'd all attended church at least once a week because that's just what their community _does_. If you don't show up to church on Saturday or Tuesday, you had better be sick as a dog. Botta had sat and listened, flipping through the religious texts and running his fingers over the thin, tissue-like pages, at the fading ink and the worn covers. Sirin used to get slapped for falling asleep during the service.

"Would it make you happy?" Botta asks.

"I think so."

"Then I'll support you."

Olanya smiles at him, a quiet radiance all its own. "I hoped you would."

"I'm not going to church though."

That makes her laugh. "I never expected you to."

There comes a day a few years later when some humans bomb their little branch of the Church, on the half-elf side of town. Botta has never had a very strong temper, but he snaps that day. He hears bones breaking and obscenities being shouted at him as he shoves through the crowd the humans have made, trying to get inside because that's his baby sister in there.

Olanya makes it out okay, relatively speaking. She's burned, but the burns aren't nearly as bad as they could be. It does take her a long time to heal though, because the burns had been along her arms when she'd been trying to get out, but the door had caught fire.

_(Her arms would be scarred after that, bumpy ridges of scar tissue that she had to constantly put lotion on so her arms didn't stiffen up. She stayed at home to rest, helping grandpa with the sea charts for the next fishing trip further out to sea. There was talk of how it was always the quiet ones, of how Botta had exploded into action that day. If people asked, he simply said, "She's family. What else would I do?")_

The humans remember his face after that. They cause a lot of trouble, but Botta fights back against them. His men do too, even after the law starts carting them away for rebellion and rioting. Not that riots have ever been started by his people, but the humans don't need an excuse.

Oddly enough, it's the Desians who help him. They join in on the fights that they see, protecting his men. One of them uses healing arts to slow down the bleeding of Botta's second-in-command, Sean, until they can get him to a doctor.

They even stick around at the doctor's, waiting for the news.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" Botta asks quietly. The Desian that's beside him is the one who'd healed Sean; the Desian is a thin guy, but certainly not frail. He's very lean muscle over bone, but he's also got the short build of a person who's known starvation and malnutrition.

"Your friend? He should. He didn't lose too much blood, thankfully." The Desian turns to look at Botta. "Why were you fighting them?"

"The humans? Do I really need to explain that to you, of all people?" Botta crosses his arms, shifting his weight back and forth like he's on the deck of a ship. "I thought you lot were distinctly anti-human."

"I was making sure it wasn't for a specific reason. We can help, y'know. That's why we're here. To help our kind."

Sure. Botta believes that. They've helped Sirin, at least. He just doesn't think that they're doing much to help the situation of the world at all. If anything, they're hurting it. Just causing more chaos. "And yet, nothing happens to the humans who abuse us, who take away our rights, our freedoms. I've seen good men go to jail, probably put there to rot, because they fought against the humans imposing their biased laws against us."

The Desian is studying him with a critical eye. "I think you would make a good fit for the Desians, actually. You're right, there are issues with our presence, but there aren't many people who can see the situation like you can. You know exactly what needs to be done."

"Call it a gift."

"Is it a gift you're willing to use for us?"

"Really? One of my closest friends may be dying right now and you're turning this into a recruitment? No thanks."

The Desian holds his hands up like he's innocent. "You're right. That was a dick move. But seriously, just think about it."

* * *

The Renegades are a family, first and foremost. That isn't how it started, but that's where they are now and none of them are protesting. Most of them are orphans of some kind anyway, with their family dead or missing.

So when Selene and James announce they're getting married, both bases explode in happiness. Everyone is embracing and congratulating them and asking what they can do to help with the wedding.

Everyone has a job that somehow manages to get done in between their actual work. People are doing flowers, Francine's sister offers to let Selene use her wedding dress, which Selene gratefully accepts. Jeffrey, who has his wife and three children on the Flanoir base, helps build an altar for them to stand at. They work on stockpiling enough food for a proper party and enough tables for everyone to sit at—they take their meals in rounds, after all. There is simply not enough space for all these people—and finally it's Yuan who comes up with the solution that they can put up a temporary tent outside to help fit everyone.

The people of Triet find out too—and they love the Renegades, as business partners and as friends—so they offer some of their ideas and spells—little household things that aren't formal spells, but that everyone knows in order to help keep the houses cool.

At some point, they realize that they don't actually have anyone to officiate the marriage. They have quite a few different professions in their ranks, but no clergy.

"I have a sister who's a priestess," Botta offers. "I can pay her a visit, see if she'll do it for you."

Selene gives him a smacking kiss on the cheek in thanks, positively beaming.

Yuan finds him as he's packing for the trip. It's not a long one, out to Iselia, where Olanya had gone to finish her training. "Your family has quite the assortment of skills."

"But you knew that already." It's no secret to Yuan about his family history. After all, Yuan is the one who'd found him after he'd attracted a lot of attention with the Desians.

"I did. I just didn't think it extended to the clergy."

Discussions with Yuan about the Church of Martel are difficult to gauge. Martel in general is a sensitive subject. "Olanya likes religion."

Yuan tilts his head curiously. "You make it sounds like she doesn't believe in it."

"Oh, she does." Botta folds some shirts, stuffing them to the bottom of his travelling pack. "But her interest always seemed rather…academic, to me. Like the very mythology that's been created about the Church is more interesting than her faith."

"Have you told her?" Yuan asks.

He doesn't need to be more specific. "No. She may not be as devout as other priestesses, but I won't be the one to take away her support system." Botta doesn't want to tell Olanya the truth about Martel, about their messiah in the Chosen One.

"You're very good at being the protective older brother." For some reason, that seems to amuse Yuan, curling his lip just a little bit.

"I certainly hope so," Botta tells him. "Because that's what I am."

Yuan bids him a safe journey, and Botta doesn't like to think that he relishes the idea of a few days travelling on his own. Being with people can be exhausting, he's found, and the thing about living with the Renegades is that there are _always_ people around.

He passes through Iselia—it's the beginning of spring now, and the buds are beginning to bloom in the orchards—nodding to the guards while keeping his woven hat pulled low over his triangular ears. It's still a bit chilly enough that Botta can use his hat to hide his race.

The Martel Chapel houses the most priests and priestesses of any chapel or church in the world. Not that that's saying much. There isn't a whole lot of money to build up proper churches in most villages. Botta had been surprised that the Martel Chapel had accepted Olanya at all, with her being a half-elf. But the old woman who is in charge of the Chapel, Phaidra—grandmother to the current Chosen—had told Olanya that the Goddess does not belong to any one race, that any person who should wish to worship should be able to. When Botta is told that story, it makes him respect Phaidra.

Olanya sees him coming up the steps and smiles wide. She's almost forty-five, now. Not that she looks like it. She looks like a woman in her late twenties in human years, at the very least and in her mid-thirties at the most. He catches her when she comes to hug him, spinning her around like he used to when she was a child. She giggles into his shoulder, squeezing him tight before he lets go.

They have tea sitting out in one of the gardens on the edges of the Chapel. He can see why she prefers Iselia to Palmacosta. The sea is still nearby enough that Botta can hear the waves crashing, that the smell of sea salt still lingers, but there is none of the sea soaked into the culture, the very bones of the land here. The atmosphere here is calmer; none of the constant activity of the docks, not a lot of travelers, and Iselia isn't a very busy town. No Desians either, not with the non-aggression treaty.

"How is this place treating you?" Botta asks, sipping tentatively at his tea, wincing when it's too hot.

"Rather well, actually. There were a few problems, at first, but Phaidra backed me up. It's quiet—not a lot of people really talk to me, other than Phaidra, and the Chosen One sometimes, when she comes around, but it's not terrible."

"And in Iselia?" He knows that the priests and priestesses tend to live inside the Chapel for a while. Some eventually move out to Iselia, making the trek every day out to the Chapel, but Botta can't imagine Olanya wanting to do that. Iselia is one of the tamer towns, in terms of anti-half-elf attitudes, but that doesn't mean that it would make living there comfortable for her.

"I don't go into town very often. And yes, I keep my head down when I go," she assures him. Her hair is thick and long enough that she doesn't really _need_ to wear a hood or a hat, but it's an old habit that Botta had instilled in her when he'd still held her hand as they walked to school. "At the very least, all this time to myself gives me a chance to write."

Olanya is the only one out of the three of them that had taken up their mother's talent of music. Botta can hold a tune, and read sheet music, but he hasn't played piano since he left Palmacosta. He doesn't think he could even remember a single song.

"Any new pieces I should hear?" Olanya has the fascinating talent to write either the gentlest of melodies, ringing with the calmness of hymns, or to write the dirtiest and cheekiest of drinking songs. And it's not like she can really play the latter songs around the Chapel.

"Maybe. After you tell me why you came all the way out here."

"What makes you think that I didn't just come out here to visit my youngest sister?"

"Please, Botta. I have no doubt in my mind that you love me, but you've been busy with…whatever you've been doing out in Triet. I doubt you have a whole lot of free time, and you wouldn't waste it just coming to visit with me. What's going on?"

"Some friends of mine are getting married, and they don't have a priest. I thought that maybe you could help them with that."

"A wedding?" Olanya grins, wide and bright. "Sounds like fun!"

The wedding happens in February, very late into the afternoon so that they can take advantage of the cool temperatures of the evening. Olanya looks very official, in her priestess robes, her hair braided and twisted together. They aren't being married in the name of Martel—they can't, not when they know the truth, and especially not with Yuan in attendance, despite his assurances that it's okay, he wouldn't be offended.

Botta glances over at Yuan, who is sitting near the back, jaw set. He looks down at Yuan's left hand, where his thumb is twisting the ring in an absent motion. "Are you alright?" Botta asks him quietly.

He doesn't actually expect to get an answer—not now, not surrounded by all these people. Usually, Yuan is willing to answer Botta's questions when they're alone—and he's proven right by the way that Yuan's hand stills. "Yes, I'm fine."

_(It was a lie, but really, what could Yuan say? That he didn't like weddings? He didn't want to dampen everyone's mood. There wasn't a lot of joy in their line of work, not a lot of chances for normal things like this. Let them enjoy it)_

* * *

Botta's first kiss is from Melia, who had gone to school with him, but had dropped out two years before she had graduated. She's a carpenter's daughter and she asks if he has plans about the yearly Undine Festival. He tells her no, and she invites him to go with her.

The Undine Festival is a lot of fun, coming from the streets onto some of the larger ships. Colorful lanterns are hung, and there are a hundred different songs playing from a hundred different directions, everyone with their own instruments. People leap into the ocean, lounging in the water, as no ships are allowed to sail in or out of the harbor today. Long tables are laid out with home-cooked meals, and drinks flow freely.

They've just finished a dance, laughing breathlessly because Melia is really not a very good dancer, but Botta had just smiled when she had stepped on his feet, and Melia's hand is really very warm in his as she tugs him through the crowd. He finds himself whirled around so his back is against a wall and her lips are suddenly on his.

That night will end in a blur—mostly from alcohol—but Botta will never be able to forget two things: her taste of candied apples and liquor, and how pretty her smile looks.

_(In three years, Melia would be dead. Murdered as an example by some humans who had had a business disagreement with her father. They killed her in front of her parents and dragged her body into the street, as a warning to all the half-elves. Botta's fists were clenched in rage even as he bent over to empty the contents of his stomach. Wasn't anyone going to fight them?)_

* * *

Botta is almost engaged, once, when he's twenty-nine. To Gabrielle, one of the housekeepers at the inn. She has dark, mossy hair, and pale gray eyes, and she's bold and sweet and he loves her.

Her mother is a janitor at the Academy and her father is in the militia. Botta goes to dinner with the, nervous and trying not to stutter over his words. Gabrielle's hand is solid in his, her thumb running over the back of his hand. Her parents actually end up liking him, and they get over most of the awkwardness before dessert.

Gabrielle's mother's flan is the most delicious dessert Botta has or will ever taste.

Gabrielle has a wicked side, and she's been known to be _very_ distracting while Botta is trying to take inventory. Not that his bosses mind. They just grin and wink at him when he shows up a little while later, hair mussed and cheeks red.

She finds him on break, once, straddling a bridge bannister, a book in his hands. "Why didn't you become a teacher?" Gabrielle asks after kissing him in greeting. He's sure he still tastes like the tuna sandwich he'd had for lunch, but she doesn't seem to mind.

Botta blinks at her, surprised at the question. No one's ever asked him that before. "We needed the money. Teachers don't get paid enough."

"Okay, but…that was then. Why not take up teaching now? You don't really have a whole lot of people to take care of."

She's right. His grandparents take care of themselves, pretty much, only occasionally asking him to pick up groceries on the way home. Sirin is living in Luin, and Olanya has her own room in the Church. It's just Mama, really, and they've steadied out well enough that Botta doesn't have to work such long hours anymore. He probably could get by on a teacher's wages, maybe with the occasional extra hours helping out on the docks.

But then Botta thinks about being inside a building, all day, looking at the same faces, and seeing the same little square of sky through the window. Here, at least, he can see the horizon, can watch the ships come and go, and if sometimes, he feels like a little piece of himself goes with some of the cargo, off to some far off destination, well, everyone gets a little delirious if they don't eat often enough. Being a teacher would only tie him down to this city more. He doesn't want that, but he also doesn't really want to leave. He doesn't know what he would do, where he would go, and he doesn't know how to articulate that in words for Gabrielle.

So he simply says, "I wouldn't make a very good teacher. And I like what I do."

The first one isn't a lie. The second one is almost the truth.

She leaves him, though. After almost two years together. Her father had decided to join the Desians. "It would be making a difference," he says over the dinners that have become a standing invitation, every other Friday. "Our militia is a joke. We can't actually do anything against people that threaten us."

"You're talking about the humans." Because there aren't any outside threats to Palmacosta. No city or town actually manages to raise up enough power to have their own army, to actually pose a threat to other towns. Any wars they see are going to be within their own city borders.

"Of course I am! If I can help stop them abusing their power, then I will."

"Do you really think that's what the Desians are about?" Botta remembers Sean, remembers the Desian standing beside him, remembers his words. "They have the most military power in Sylvarant. I'm sure they could lay siege to this city and win, if they really wanted to, but they don't. They're not what they say they are."

Gabrielle is staring at him. "This is a great opportunity for Papa."

Botta thinks of Sirin, out in Luin. He knows this is hypocritical, knows that he can't really blame Gabrielle's father for wanting something more than the crumbs that half-elves have been tossed, but he's doing it for the wrong reasons. It's not about righteousness. It's about revenge. Gabrielle's mom had come home, hollow-eyed and shaking after an attack from the humans a week ago.

"It is," Botta says finally and he wants to believe it. _(He wanted this family, wanted Gabrielle. She made the itch under his skin, the one that had decided when he was nine years old to never be like his great-grandfather, settle, made it almost disappear. He wanted to marry her, wanted to start a life with her)_

Dinner is still tense, after that, but they manage to push through. Gabrielle walks him out, afterwards, and she feels far away, even though she's right beside him.

"It bothers you. Papa being in the Desians."

Botta nods; he doesn't like lying to her. "It's impulsive. He's going to get killed out there, trying to get revenge." He's known more than a few friends to come home from the Desians in a body bag.

Gabrielle's lips press together, her arms crossing. "Are you kidding me? You told me about the day that the humans went after the Church when your sister was in there. How can you not hate them?"

"They can't all be bad, Gaby!" Botta has to believe that. "And I'm not going to hate an entire race of people for something that only a portion of them do. If I did that, how am I any better than them?"

"Because we aren't _murderers_ like they are," Gabrielle hisses. "They don't have to walk the streets with their heads down, afraid to look anyone in the eye in case they're having an off day and decide to take it out on them. They treat us like we're less than them, like we're dirt under their boots. We don't control the government like they do, don't control cities. We just have our little corners of town and that's what we get stuck with. The corners of town that _flood_ every time a drizzle passes through. We can't get decent paying jobs, can't be employed as anything other than, what, maids? Delivery boys? Assistants and fishermen? There's more to life than that, Botta!"

"You think I don't know that? But shoving them in those ranches isn't the answer, Gaby. It's only making the whole thing worse."

Her jaw sets, eyes hard. "If you actually believe that, then this isn't going to work."

Botta's heart drops a little at her words. _(If he was being honest with himself, some instinctive part of him had already accepted it at some point tonight. This wasn't coming as some great shock)_ "I wish it could."

"Me too, Botta." She isn't crying, not yet, but she's starting to blink a lot, and he knows she's going to. "Take care."

She kisses him goodbye, a brief, barely-there kiss on the cheek. He squeezes her hand before he goes.

* * *

Botta is thirty-seven when he first hears about the Renegades. It's just a rumor, at that point, one of the stories that his friends tell over drinks after work. Rumors of opportunities for people to fight back, to do something with their lives. A rebellion.

To Botta, it just sounds a bit like the Desians without the propaganda, and the uniforms.

He's forty-one when Yuan finds him. He's the last one working that night, finishing up the inventory, when Yuan knocks on a crate in lieu of a door.

"Can I help you?" Botta knows just about every half-elf in town, and those he doesn't know, he can recognize. This face is one he hasn't seen before.

Holding out a hand, the other man says, "My name is Yuan. I'm looking for Botta? I was told he'd be out here."

Botta shakes his hand. "Who told you that?"

"Some nice gentlemen at the bar. We shared a round of drinks."

There's something about Yuan that sets off vague alarm bells in the back of Botta's mind. There's nothing immediately threatening about him. No visible weapons, and he doesn't look like he's here for a fight. If anything, it's how decidedly _non_ -threatening he looks; the cloak to keep the chill away—November is not a great time to be in Palmacosta, particularly at night—the way he's leaning on the cargo, stance open and friendly. His hair is long enough to cover his ears, but he has it pulled back, keeping the triangular tips in clear view. The man isn't even really built like a usual brawler; too lean, for that.

"And why did you want to find me?"

"The way I hear it, you've been causing a lot of problems for the Desians lately."

"It's not exactly a secret." Botta tenses a little; what if Yuan is a Desian? Here to kill him and dump his body in the ocean, finally rid them of the trouble. The Desians have been taking cuts from some of the civilian cargo deliveries, or trying to. Botta hadn't been about to let them do it without a fight.

Maybe Yuan understands, because his lips do an odd thing where they don't quite smile, or smirk, but they tilt a little like they want to. "I'm not a Desian, you can relax. I'm the opposite, as a matter of fact."

"And what would that be?"

"Have you heard of the Renegades?"

"Who hasn't? They're quite the drinking story."

"Not the best publicity, but," Yuan shrugs, raking some of his bangs out of his eyes. "I can't really complain. I can't exactly put up recruitment posters."

"Is that why you're here? To recruit me?"

"I've seen your records. Best in classes, several offers from the Desians to join them, but you've refused. You're quite the handy man to have around in these parts, if the talk is to be believed."

Botta rolls his eyes. "The boys really need to learn to hold their drink better."

"Can't blame them. They work hard. They deserve a break."

"Why would I want to join the Renegades?" Botta sets down his clipboard, folding his arms. "I'm not interested in trying to start a war against the Desians."

Something about that sentence makes a spark go off in Yuan's eyes. "Why not? After all they've done? You certainly don't owe them anything."

Botta doesn't tell him that he kind of does, that Sirin is living a good life because of them. "Because calling it a war would be a euphemism for a massacre. The Desians have the numbers, the technology and the weapons. They probably wouldn't even have to work hard to get leverage over the humans, to bring Governer Dorr's little son, Dorr Junior, to the ranch. The humans wouldn't help with that kind of threat levied against them, their loved ones trapped in the ranches. So the war would be fought with half-elven lives against half-elves, and our side would lose."

Yuan hums a little. "Excellent points. And if I told you that the Renegades had access to the same technology as the Desians? The same weapons, even."

"They still have greater numbers."

"Don't play that game, Botta. You're a smart man; you know that numbers aren't everything in a battle."

"They still control the supply routes, the roads, the ports. If we start a war, then all they have to do is blockade us until there are no supplies left. The Renegades will starve in their beds."

"So it's 'we' now, is it?"

Botta narrows his eyes at him. "You're fighting a losing battle, Yuan."

Yuan pushes himself off the crates he'd been leaning against. Standing upright, he's a bit taller than Botta, but it's not the inch or so of height difference that makes him seem powerful. It's the set in his shoulders that are no longer loose, the sharpness in his eyes, the determination in his stance. "I don't think of it that way. You're right; we _would_ lose an outright war. That's why I don't intend to make it one."

"And what exactly do you intend to do?"

"It's a battle of information. And that's where I excel. The Desians are barely the pawns in the overall game. I'm going for the king."

It's difficult for Botta to picture; the Desians have been a powerful presence his entire life. Still, he knows there's something more than what the Desians are selling. It's not just a labor camp they have out there in the mountains. And if they need labor, what do they need labor _for_?

"And you have a plan for that?"

"I do. You understand why I need to know that you're willing to join first before I lay it all out."

Botta has to take a deep breath first. He's never felt any need to join any kind of military organization, but… "The Renegades…they're not out for revenge, are they?"

"As a whole, no. Although, I suppose this could be called a kind of vengeance against the Desians. Some people would use the word 'justice'."

"What word would _you_ use?"

He appreciates that Yuan seems to think about it. It makes it seem like he's getting an honest answer. "…Not to be cliché, but…I'd call it the right thing. Not to say that we don't do some bad things. We've killed, we've destroyed lives with the information we have."

"Are you going to tell me it's for 'the greater good'?"

At first, Botta doesn't recognize the sound. It's sharp, and harsh, and bitter. It takes a moment to realize that it had been a short laugh. The twist of Yuan's lips is a proper smirk now. "No. I've seen the things that can be done in the name of the greater good, and I'm not interested in any of it. It's not for the greater good. It's for change. This system's been in place for too long. This may not fix it, but it will be a start."

He's honest. Botta likes that. Not one word out of his mouth has felt like the shady propaganda that the Desians, and even the militia, uses. "And I'm free to back out? If I change my mind?"

"Well, we would prefer if you didn't, but I won't stop you." Yuan stuffs his hands in his pockets, and suddenly the imposing, powerful man is gone, and the harmless façade has returned. "I think I'm a fairly decent judge of character, though, and you don't seem like the type to quit."

"…Alright. I'm in."

"Good man. Now, I'm not sure about you, but I haven't had dinner yet and there was a really good smell down the street from the bar. Join me for dinner?"

Botta looks down at the clipboard, around the docks. Technically speaking, he has a job to finish, but at the moment? "Dinner sounds good."

_(Dinner was where Yuan told Botta the truth, the entire truth, over flounder and rice with curry slathered over top. Botta didn't believe him at first, which, who could blame him? The world being split into two by Mithos the Hero? Who Yuan had travelled with? The Desians being pawns of the Church of Martel, both of which were being controlled by an organization called Cruxis? It was insane, honestly, but the more Yuan talked, the more things seemed to click into place)_

* * *

Botta is the one that often goes on recruitments now. Yuan goes too, but the Renegades are getting to be less of rumors and more of the underground rebellion that they are, and the Desians are keeping their eyes out for them. Yuan's face is too easily recognized—and remembered—so Botta usually volunteers.

People believe him, generally. Apparently, he has one of those 'truthful' faces. Yuan laughs when Botta tells him that. "You look like an honest man," Yuan explains.

"As opposed to…?"

"Me. I tend to set people on edge."

Botta remembers the day he had met Yuan, and he agrees. Yuan can play innocent, but there is always something about him that doesn't feel like it really is harmless. The Renegades discuss it, sometimes. Not out of malice, and Yuan is oftentimes in the room when they do, rolling his eyes and nodding at the particularly interesting theories.

"It's his accent," Delia suggests one day. She's the wife of Gunther, who Botta had recruited and who had refused to leave his wife behind in Asgard. "It's…off."

Yuan raises an eyebrow when they all turn to look at him, checking things off on one of the papers in his lap. "Do you expect me to start reciting a poem so you guys can confirm that?"

"You don't strike me as the type to like poetry," Botta says.

"I don't. That's why I won't be reciting it."

Delia isn't wrong though. Yuan does have an accent. It's subtle, hardly there unless something happens to spark Yuan's temper. The accent isn't of any region in Tethe'alla _or_ Sylvarant. At least, not anymore. It's something instinctive that makes people recognize that it's not quite right, that they've never heard anything like it.

The Renegades are an odd bunch; Botta decides this when he's forty-one and he's been a part of the Renegades less than a month. They're an assortment of people from all over the world—world _s_. Plural. It's going to be hard to get used to saying that—from all walks of life. Thieves, scholars, farmers, shopkeepers…everything. And somehow, they all mesh. Not always perfectly—arguments are abound—but they're cohesive, watching each other's children, cooking and cleaning, sewing each other up. It's like a family.

It's been a long time since Botta's been part of a family.

His grandparents died five years ago, within six months of each other. The doctor had called it 'heartbreak'. After all, everyone had known how devoted his grandmother had been to his grandfather, who had died first. Botta doesn't know whether he believes that people can die of heartbreak. _(Was it sad that he was more willing to believe in Cruxis, and two worlds, but not in love that powerful?)_

Olanya is completing another level of her priestess training in Hima. According to the Church—and Botta can _feel_ the waves of sarcasm emanating from the letter—being in such an empty space helps to focus the mind and broaden the senses so that they are more open to the Goddess. Olanya will be living in Hima for two years while she completes this training. She complains about missing the sea, and of missing g _reen_ things. Or anything with color, really. Everything out in Hima is in shades of brown, apparently.

Sirin's letters are less detailed and less scheduled than Olanya's, but still fairly common. Sometimes, she'll write three times in a month and the next, she won't write more than a few scribbled lines. She seems to be enjoying Luin, and the Asgard ranch. She's even been out to the Tower of Mana, to take a look at the wards surrounding it. She's been trained in technology now, one of the best, and her biochemical skills combined with that make her highly valuable. Supposedly, the Tower of Mana might be a seal for the Chosen, she explains, so she'd been sent to see if she could figure out how the oracle stones registered the Chosen DNA.

So far, no luck. Sirin's handwriting becomes sharp and annoyed by this point. Botta doesn't blame her. He has felt similar frustration as he's taught his way around computers and Cruxis technology.

The letters are the extent of Botta's communication with his sisters most of the year. He tells them he's gone to Triet as a change of scenery and if either of them are in the area, to find him. He gives them the address of one of the Renegade safehouses, where a Renegade is always staying, so they can just ask for him and someone will be able to find him.

He doesn't tell them about the Renegades. Sirin because she's in the Desians and while he trusts her, he doesn't trust that their mail is not being intercepted, and Olanya because he doesn't want to worry her.

Either way, the Renegades are his closest family now. Physically, anyway. He gets used to people clapping him on the back, and expecting him for dinner. Gets used to people shouting that he's taking too long in the shower, and tossing him his dry laundry as they unclip it from the clotheslines.

Sometimes, Botta escapes into Yuan's office. He'd practically grown up among the other dockworkers, so he'd been used to their presence, but the presence of so many people, all over the place, all the time, can be a bit daunting. So he hides. The first time, Yuan had given him a confused look, but now, Botta has what is essentially his own designated chair where he sits to read, or do paperwork in the quiet.

They take supper together sometimes too. Yuan doesn't need to eat—he'd explained that during that first dinner—but he likes to. It's over these occasional suppers that Yuan will ask what he'd been working on, or what the book had been about.

Botta hasn't had anyone to _really_ discuss books since Sirin left. And he half-expects Yuan to get bored halfway through Botta's explanations and theories—after all, Yuan must have read these books a dozen times in his life by now—but he never does. Yuan listens intently, often offering up his own opinions and counterarguments. And then they'll suggest books back and forth, and once, Yuan had pounded on Botta's door in the middle of the night, startling him awake, fearing an emergency, and had promptly shoved a book in Botta's chest, grumbling about ridiculous plot twists and how he owed Botta twenty gald for betting on the right person to die at the end of the novel.

* * *

Botta is fifty-three when he's—officially—appointed as Yuan's second-in-command. It's been unofficial for quite some time now, and so far, Yuan had been right, that first night. Botta has felt no desire to quit or walk away from the Renegades in all his time here.

The party that goes on that night in the Flanoir base lasts well into the morning. Botta doesn't remember drinking all that much—really, he's not that much of a drinker in the first place, besides one or two beers at the end of a long day—but he wakes up the next morning in another man's bed.

Botta isn't particularly averse to waking beside Donovan; they often work the early shift together, and while he prefers women, Botta's found men attractive before and Donovan is certainly in that category. But before he—or Donovan, who is groaning and hiding his head in a pillow—can properly process what's going on, a knock comes on the door and they're told that Yuan needs to see Botta, now.

Donovan turns and opens his eyes blearily, squinting at Botta. His eyes seem a much brighter blue without his glasses. "…We good?"

Botta scrubs a hand through his hair, stretching and feeling his spine pop in several places. He may be only starting his middle age, as far as average half-elven life spans go, but there are mornings when he feels older. "Only 'good'? I must be losing my touch."

There's a snort-chuckle, still slightly drowsy. "I can assure you, you haven't."

Botta finds his shirt hanging from one of the dresser drawer handles. Where his underwear and pants are—that's a different story. He slips his shirt on and looks back at him. "In all seriousness though, this doesn't have to change anything if you don't want it to."

Donovan stretches, long and lean, and he smirks when he catches Botta's eyes lingering. "I read somewhere that change is good for your health."

Botta laughs as he goes on his knees to check under the bed. _There_ are his pants. "You can't believe everything you read in the paper."

He almost bumps his head on Donovan's as he moves to get up. Donovan has a wicked smile on his lips. "We should test the theory then. How do you feel about a repeat performance?"

No sign of his underwear still, and whoever had come to the door—it had sounded like Liam, Mary's teenage son—had made it sound like a slight emergency. Botta decides that he'll find underwear later and just tugs his pants on. "That sounds like the best idea I've heard all week." Botta brushes a quick kiss on Donovan's lips before he heads out the door. "You might as well take advantage of the fact that Yuan doesn't hate you, so you can sleep in."

Donovan's laughter follows him out the door.

"I take it you had fun last night?"

Botta appreciates that Yuan pretends that his senses aren't as good as they are. He's sure that Yuan had heard—or could have heard—everything last night, but Botta is not partial to being reminded of that. "You know how I love a good party."

Yuan snorts. "Yes, you're a regular party animal."

"What's the emergency?"

"Sylvarant's latest Chosen is coming of age next week."

"Why is that a problem?"

"Because her cousin died last year. He was the original Chosen."

"So she's next in line." Botta leans in to check the computer screen that Yuan had been reading. "And that's why she didn't trip any of the radars. She isn't supposed to be next in line."

"No. Cruxis is changing it up. They believe they have a traitor in their midst and they're trying to lure them out."

"Well, they're not wrong. And if we send guards to protect her?"

"Then Cruxis knows for sure that they have a traitor. The girl won't know until the oracle comes, so until then, it's just us and Cruxis."

"We can't just let her die. Spiritua was the last successful Chosen that Sylvarant had and that was sixty years ago. The balance is starting to tip in Tethe'alla's favor."

"That's why I'm open to suggestions. If the Desians encounter Renegades, then we'll be exposed as having the traitor and Cruxis will triple their security, which might not help this Chosen in time."

"…What if they don't encounter Renegades?"

Yuan frowns; he tends to be able to follow Botta's leaps in logic pretty well, but today, it's not happening. "How so?"

"What if they encounter Desians? We can forge the fact that orders went out, that the wrong team got assigned. If we get there first, dressed as Desians, then the Chosen's safe for now. We can figure out a way to guard her after that."

"It's not a bad plan. Cruxis tends to send an angel down to guard them, but it won't be hard to bypass that order. At least, so it's visible from the angel's point of view. And then one or two of ours can go with her as she unlocks the seals." Yuan leans back in the chair, his fingers tapping against the tabletop. "But that doesn't work though. All it will do is flip the balance. We would need to ensure that the Chosen _doesn't_ make it to the Tower so that Yggdrasill doesn't have another potential vessel for Martel."

"You're talking about essentially assassinating a sixteen-year old girl," Botta says flatly. He can understand the way Yuan's mind works, and he doesn't like the way it's going.

"It's her or the Age of Lifeless Beings. Unless you have a better suggestion."

"…I don't. But killing the Chosen is a temporary solution. One that doesn't help Sylvarant." Botta leans on the console, looking down at Yuan. "What happened to your long game? I don't think we are much closer to finding a way to put an end to Yggdrasill."

"I'm working on it. The magic around the Eternal Sword, and around the Great Seed, is complex. I've only been able to figure out pieces of it."

_(He wondered if Botta would ask. Would ask why Yuan, who had helped create those spells and locks all those millennia ago, couldn't figure it out now. And maybe Yuan would tell him. Would tell him that those spells were created in the midst of their insanity, when they didn't care what happened, they just needed a way to preserve Martel, to keep the worlds going. The seal for the Eternal Sword was tied intrinsically to Kratos' life, and Yuan would avoid killing him if he could. And the magic around the Great Seed…that was the most complex. Tying into Martel's Exsphere, threaded through the roots of the Seed, and knotted with the Summon Spirits. Yuan could barely decipher what they'd done in some of those pieces, his mind having come back too far from that broken state to go back to it)_

"Fine. We'll kill the girl. But we need a solution, Yuan." It isn't often that Botta uses his name. Not on official business. "If we kill her, then we have to work on killing the _entire Chosen line_ here in Sylvarant. We'll be dooming this world just to keep Martel from returning." Yuan doesn't flinch at the words, but his finger begins rubbing at his wedding ring. It's close enough. "Or, if we don't, we have to pick and choose which Chosens make it to the Tower. You played god before; I won't let it happen again."

Botta is the only one allowed to speak to Yuan this frankly. Yuan is always available to listen to ideas, but no one else has ever thrown Yuan's sins in his face like this. Yuan needs that; otherwise, he'll fall back into the same old patterns. He would get too focused on the endgame to worry about the means. The world already broke because of that.

* * *

Botta does kill the girl. She's pretty; all sunshine blonde hair and hazel eyes, skin brown from working in the sun. She lives in Asgard, and Botta waits in the House of Salvation a few miles out until after the oracle has passed, until the Chosen and her guards—militia-men from Asgard. She won't make it to the Tower anyway, he tries to tell himself—come to rest for the night.

He slices her throat in her sleep, leaves her guards to find her.

He doesn't even quite make it to the Rheaird before he's collapsing to his knees to vomit up his dinner. _(Sixteen. Sixteen years old and dead. She didn't even know why she'd died. All because of Yggdrasill. Because of his insanity and his grief._ Their _grief. Botta cannot forget that Yuan is partly responsible for this)_

It takes him a long time to manage to get to his feet; his legs are shaking too hard. He tries to tell himself that if he'd faced the three of them in a fight, the result would have been the same. The girl is a trained fighter—not an expert by any means, but she has her short sword—and the militiamen might have seen some fighting, but Botta would have defeated them easily. It would have just hurt them more.

It takes him longer than it should to take the Rhearid back to the base, but he isn't going full speed. With his mind the way it is right now? He'd likely drive into a mountain. When he arrives, it's nearly dawn. He leaves the Rheaird in the hangar, not even putting it away properly, stumbling a bit until he gets his balance.

Yuan is underneath some computers—likely trying to fix that glitch that makes only half the screen bright—when Botta reports to him. Botta doesn't say anything to announce his presence; all of the Renegades are well aware that Yuan has enhanced senses and that there really is no sneaking up on him.

Yuan pushes himself out, dust in his hair and on his face. "That took longer than expected; it's almost dawn. Were there complications?"

Feeling his fist crack across Yuan's cheek is _incredibly_ satisfying. It knocks the seraphim back a step with the force. Botta wants to keep going, wants to make that ageless face break and bleed, wants to _hurt_. "The girl's dead." Botta's voice is hoarse, his throat still raw from retching. "And the next time you want to assassinate someone, do it yourself. This isn't what I signed up for."

_(He half-expected Yuan to retaliate. His body even tensed, waiting for the blow, but it never came. Yuan went still, a terrible kind of stillness that he was always careful not to let happen because it wasn't a mortal thing. It was the kind of stillness that came with not having to breathe. He didn't move for a long minute and finally, Botta just turned around and left)_

* * *

It takes a week for Yuan to come to him. In that week, they are coldly professional in the rare times that they communicate directly. Donovan matches the icy silences with Yuan; after all, he'd been the one to wake up to Botta shaking in his sleep, waking up in cold sweats. He'd seen the damage that had been done to his lover firsthand.

It is Botta's turn to do the dishes, and he almost doesn't hear Yuan enter the room. _(It was something decisive, purposeful. Yuan could walk across the room without a single sound, but he was practically announcing his presence with his footsteps deliberately loud like that)_

Yuan takes up the position to Botta's left, taking a dishtowel to dry the dishes. "…You were right. About the Chosen."

"Which part?"

"It was wrong to ask you to kill her. I started this entire mess; I should have been the one to do it…and also that perhaps killing her was unnecessary. Until we have a better plan, there's no point in disturbing the balance."

"…They wouldn't have lasted long," Botta tells him. "Against the guardians of the seals."

Yuan's hands clench in the dishtowel. "Then it was doubly unnecessary and cruel of me to ask you to do that. I'm sorry."

Botta doesn't forgive him that day, and they finish the dishes in silence. It takes a long time for Botta to forgive him properly, and even then, it takes longer until they get their relationship back.

* * *

His sister sends him a letter a little bit before his sixtieth birthday. Sirin writes that the new experimentation guidelines that she's been given are making her very wary. They don't seem right.

It keeps Botta up at night; he sits in the kitchen, reading the words over and over. He's known that the Desians experiment on the humans in their ranches—that part is old news—but the fact that Sirin is bothered by the new ones means that there is a severe line that has to be crossed. She's usually accepting of many things in the name of science.

Yuan comes down, making a beeline for the coffee maker. He eyes the paper in Botta's hands. "Bad news from the girls? Are they alright?"

"They're fine. It's just—this doesn't feel right." Botta holds out the letter and Yuan reads it quickly.

"I haven't heard of anything new being authorized in the ranches. Not that Kvar has always been much of a rule-follower, but still."

"What is Kvar working on? Do you know? Sirin won't say."

"Cruxis Crystals. That's been his main focus for years now. The research stalled out a while back though."

"Maybe he found a way past the roadblock."

"Perhaps." Yuan hands the letter back. "Is it possible to meet with your sister? To get more details?"

"I'll ask. I can always go to Luin. Unless I'm out of vacation days?"

Yuan snorts. "You can vacation for a month without using up half of your vacation days." Not that vacation days are a real thing for the Renegades. Work never ends for them, even if they do sometimes manage to sneak in a few days off here and there. "But yes, meet up with your sister. See what she can tell you. I'm going to Derris-Kharlan."

* * *

At fifty-eight years old, Sirin is still lovely. There are faint creases in the corners of her eyes and mouth when she smiles, and she is a little rounder in the belly and hips than before, but when she hugs him, her arms are still strong, and her smile is still just as bright.

Sirin takes him to a little place on the outskirts of Luin, on the lake. They sit on the bank and Sirin tells him about the newest experiments. "It's called the Angelus Project," she says. "It's part of the Cruxis Crystal research. Do you know how Cruxis Crystals are formed?"

"They evolve from Exspheres, from extreme emotions. Usually negative ones."

"Right. Well, before, the tests were very controlled. We made sure that the subjects couldn't be harmed too much. There were lines, y'know? But with this new project? The things that Kvar is making us do to them? It's insane."

The things that Sirin describes turn Botta's stomach, and he wraps his arms around her shoulder, tugging her close to kiss her hair. "You don't have to stay with them," he tells her, lips still against her head. "You can come with me, work with us."

_(He told her about the Renegades when they met up ten years ago. Sirin had laughed, and it had sounded a little broken, but not beaten. "Figures. What's wrong with us, huh? Why couldn't we just be happy back in Palmacosta?")_

Sirin shakes her head. "No. You guys need the information. The Desians aren't the answer. The Desians and Cruxis—all of it…it's not right. Even the humans don't deserve to be treated the way they in these ranches. I'll pass on what information I can. _You_ guys just focus on finding a way to beat Cruxis. You understand me?"

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

The news comes in trickles, from Derris-Kharlan and Sirin both. The experiments are successful, so far. The development of the Cruxis Crystals has been steady. If tears sometimes stain the coded letters, smudging her handwriting, Botta just holds it that much tighter.

Then, one day in June, a letter comes that says that there have been deaths. Sixty-six percent of the candidates had died. There's only one left standing. And her Exsphere is evolving at an exponential rate. It's like nothing they've ever seen, Sirin writes.

Two months after that letter comes, they hear about a prisoner breakout in the Asgard Ranch. When they hack into the camera feeds, Yuan's breath whooshes out of him.

"What is it, sir?" Botta asks.

"It's Kratos," Yuan answers. "That's Kratos breaking her out."

Botta has heard little of Kratos Aurion, the only human companion that Yuan had had four thousand years ago. He'd thought him very loyal to Cruxis, and to Mithos, especially, but this is decidedly proof otherwise.

He meets her, once. The successful Angelus Project. Anna Irving. He is visiting with Sirin—in Asgard, this time—and he has only just finished walking his sister back to the inn. Olanya is meeting them tomorrow, for the distance from Iselia, where she's been for the past few years now, is quite far.

The young woman that is sitting on the steps outside the inn is a skinny thing, with a fuzzy head of brown hair. Her clothes are far too big for her, but she doesn't even seem to feel the October chill.

Botta doesn't recognize her, but he goes to crouch near her, outside of arm's range. "Excuse me, but, did you need some help?"

When she turns to look at him, _that's_ when he recognizes her from the patient photos. He has seen that face burned, tortured, teeth bared and spitting. But there is calmness now, an odd kind of serenity. "Oh, no. I'm just enjoying the night air."

Botta can understand that. Especially after being trapped in a ranch. "May I sit?"

"Sure." Her voice rasps at odd moments, not entirely recovered. "You a native to Asgard?"

Botta makes a noise in his throat. "No, I'm from Palmacosta. Just visiting some relatives over here."

"Palmacosta?" She smiles at the name; it's a common reaction from many Sylvaranti. Palmacosta is one of the largest cities in Sylvarant; every traveler's dream. "I always wanted to see it. I never even saw the ocean until recently. But you're a long way from home."

"Yeah, but…I'm learning to get pretty fond of mountains."

She laughs a little; the sound is bright, and Botta wonders how she can still do it, after all that's been done to her. "Oh, I'm kind of the opposite. Give me an open field any day. A place where you can see the sky."

"Mm. Ever been to Triet?" She shakes her head. "There aren't any trees out there, and the mountains are low, and there isn't a whole lot of electricity, so at night, when you look up, you can see everything. The galaxies, the constellations. Clear as crystal."

"I'll put it on my list," she tells him.

"If you don't freeze first," Botta says. "Do you have a coat?"

"You sound like my friend," she grumbles. "He likes to fuss too."

Is that what she's calling Kratos now? "I'm sure he's just looking out for you."

"I am." They both turn. This is Botta's first time seeing Kratos in person; he has the same way of being imposing that Yuan does. It's all in the set of his shoulders, the quiet confidence of his back, the grounded feeling of his stance. "Didn't anyone teach you not to talk to strangers, Anna?"

Botta doesn't expect her to grin lazily, one side wider than the other, as she leans back on her hands. "Well, I'm sure someone did at some point, but we both know how good I am at listening to authority. Besides me and—I never got your name."

"Botta," he says, and she shakes his hand, her grip firm, hands strong.

"I'm Anna." She redirects her attention to Kratos. "Me and Botta are just having some good times."

"Yes. I ought to be going, though. Long day tomorrow."

"Family reunion?" The sound he makes has her laughing again. "Good luck, then."

"Much appreciated." Botta turns, holding out his hand to Kratos. "Nice to meet you, as well."

Kratos' grip isn't overly strong, isn't trying to be intimidating. If he had wanted to, he could crush Botta's hand with little more than a thought. "Likewise."

_(The next time he would hear of them, Yuan would have just come back from Derris-Kharlan again. "She's pregnant," Yuan told Botta, a faraway look in his eyes. "Anna. She's a few months along now." Any talk of pregnancy, or weddings, tended to make Yuan go very quiet, but in this case, even more so. Perhaps it was because of Kratos, of the fact that he was somehow managing to be happy after all they'd done. Perhaps it was because Anna reminded Yuan of Martel—Botta didn't have a clear picture in his mind of the woman that Yuan had married. He spoke little of her—but whatever it was, it made Yuan not speak a word for the rest of the day beyond general yes and no answers to questions)_

* * *

Delia calls them down for a late lunch—"Elsewise, you're not eatin' 'til supper. Kitchen's _closed_ , you understand?"—and Botta can feel her eyes on him the entire time he's ladling his soup into a bowl. Yuan had gotten there first, and is already seated at the table, poking curiously at the contents.

"Something wrong, Delia?" Botta finally asks.

"No, just…I've got a question." Botta leans a hip on the counter, and waits. "Just…You and Yuan. Are you…"

She doesn't finish her sentence, but her expression is meaningful enough. "What? No."

"It's not a problem if y'are," Delia adds hurriedly. "I'm not about to trample on anyone's happiness."

He catches his reflection in the mirror; his hair is disheveled, his clothes tugged out of place from he and Yuan moving some of the new equipment across the room, trying out different connections with the existing machines. Yuan is slightly more put together, but really, to an outsider? It could look like they'd been fooling around.

Botta glances over at Yuan, who is quietly eating his soup, pretending like he can't hear every word they're saying. It's not eavesdropping, exactly. Even if he dims his awareness, he can only do so much, and it's not like there's much going on in this room.

"I appreciate that, but no."

Her eyes narrow thoughtfully, and Botta is reminded of some of the dock workers' wives, who had been so concerned upon learning that he and Gabrielle were no longer together. They'd been a bit…invasive, with their questions, but they'd meant well. "Would you? With him, I mean."

Botta's eyebrows nearly hit his hairline, and from the slight choking sound, Yuan had _certainly_ heard that part. So Botta turns enough to give Yuan a considering look. He has a handsome face—not quite beautiful—and the odd twist of a smirk is there, trying to be hidden, but he isn't doing a very good job. His laughter always sounds surprised, like he doesn't expect it, and his eyes are glitter-sharp like a broken bottle. There's no hiding his intelligence, or the dry, sarcastic humor that can sometimes have a morbid edge.

Overall, he's pleasing, but there's no real romantic attraction.

Yuan is looking right back at him now, not quite studying him in return, but simply waiting. "What's the verdict?" Yuan asks.

"I don't like older men," Botta tells him, and that makes Yuan laugh.

* * *

The computers go haywire the day that Kvar catches up with Kratos and Anna.

There are reports flooding in from Iselia about smoke and the smell of burning; Forcystus has orders to send out reinforcements to Kvar, and Kvar has made note of his soldiers' progress through the Iselia Mountains.

Sirin had sent a letter warning that Kvar had discovered Kratos and Anna's hiding place, but it arrives two days too late.

Yuan returns to the base several days later looking like he'd come off a battlefield. The description isn't a bad one, Botta finds, when Yuan tells him about it. There had already been a massacre when he'd arrived; Kratos is a ferocious fighter, doubly so when his family is on the line.

"He killed Anna." Yuan's hands are wrapped around a mug of tea. He doesn't drink it, but the warmth of the mug is soothing.

"They removed the Exsphere." It's a guess, but it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination. When Yuan nods, Botta asks, "And their son?"

"No sign of him."

Botta thinks of asking after Kratos, but now doesn't seem like a good time to ask. The man had killed his wife and lost his son; there is no good place to be after something like that, no headspace safe enough.

"Any news on Kvar?" Yuan asks.

"Plenty. Most of it you already know, but there's one part that I found particularly interesting." Botta leans forward, pressing his forearms against the table. "He doesn't have the Angelus Project. He removed it from Anna, but somehow, he lost it in the fighting."

The smirk that twists Yuan's lips is a dark thing, full of a vicious kind of pleasure. _(It was almost petty, but he was proud of Anna—for he was sure she had a hand in it. That woman was a rebel—for keeping it out of his hands)_ "Good. Which means that that Exsphere is still out there somewhere."

"It could have been destroyed," Botta suggests. "If it fell, it wouldn't be hard for it to get trampled, or destroyed by a spell. Exspheres are far from indestructible."

"That'd be nice," Yuan says, dipping a finger into his tea, stirring it gently. "I don't think that fate would be that kind."

"Don't be ridiculous, sir." Before Yuan can even ask, Botta hides a smirk in his coffee. "We don't believe in fate."

* * *

Botta is sixty-three when he's cornered by Lucas, a newer recruit, but then to Botta, most of them are newer. Lucas has been here for at least ten years now.

"Can I help you, Lucas?" Botta asks as he lets himself be dragged into an empty space beneath a stairwell. The kids on the base usually claim these kinds of spaces, creating forts out of blankets and old boxes.

"I'm going to ask Donovan to marry me."

"Congratulations." Botta is even sincere. He and Donovan's relationship hadn't 'ended' exactly. It had just kind of…faded away. It had been perfectly amicable on both sides; they work together with no problems, still enjoy going out for drinks with others when they have a day in Triet. Botta hadn't minded, and there had been one early morning, not long after it had happened, that Donovan had come up and asked if they were okay. They'd agreed and made their coffees before splitting off to head to their respective stations.

"No, see, I remember you two being together."

"That was years ago," Botta reminds him.

"I just—need to know that this isn't going to be a problem."

"It's not," Botta assures him. "I'm happy for both of you."

_(Botta didn't see the proposal. It happened at dinner, and he was towards the back of the rather long line after having been untangling himself from cables. The shock and cheers rolled through the room, however, and he applauded just as hard as the rest of them)_

* * *

Sirin sits with him on her balcony, one afternoon in Luin. Their bare feet are on the bannister, and they're sipping at iced tea—"It's a thing here," Sirin explains. "The heat is unbearable during the summer."—and Botta feels the late summer sun soaking some of the tension from his body.

He tells her the news from the Renegades. How Alexandra just celebrated her tenth birthday, and Robert has finished his training and is allowed out on missions now. When he tells her the news about Lucas and Donovan, her smile goes a little sad.

"What is it?" he asks.

"You and Donovan were good together," Sirin says.

Botta can see where her thoughts are going. "Careful, you'll start to sound like Mama."

That makes her laugh. "Who would've thought, huh? No, it's just…I want you to be happy, Botta."

"I am." It's not a lie either. He likes his life among the Renegades, looks forward to getting up in the morning—well, most mornings—and feeling like he's fighting a good fight, making a difference. He's watched children be born, and grow; has helped teach them to walk, and held them on his shoulders as he walked them around the base to tire them out. He's burped and bounced the babies, braided hair and tied laces; he's trained those same children, watched them become strong enough to fight on their own, watched them spar in the sand, and fall in love. "I've very happy."

"Now—I'm only gonna ask once, just so you know—but, are you sure you're alright with your life the way it is now? I mean, without a husband or a wife?" Sirin isn't naïve enough to think that her brother doesn't take the occasional lovers, but she wonders if he doesn't want something more.

He pauses, tilting his glass this way and that in order to hear the gentle clinking of the ice as he thinks. "…Maybe one day. I never quite picture myself that way though." Not since he'd joined the Renegades.

"Because you're married to your work," Sirin teases, but her doubts are settled. Botta wouldn't lie to her.

"And you aren't?"

"Mm. I've been debating lately. There have been a few offers, you know."

Botta's eyebrows go up. "Of marriage?"

"No. Just dates, mostly. But sometimes, I can picture it."

He can kind of picture it too. Sirin belongs in a place like Luin, full of warmth, and sun, and well away from the ocean. He can picture her with a family here. "Well, if you do decide to try for it, let me know. I never did get to do a very intimidating big brother routine."

"Yes, you did!" Sirin protests. "To Olanya! Remember? With Gerard from Potter Road."

"Yes, but you are an entirely different person in case you hadn't noticed."

"Don't you think I'm a bit old to make a date suffer through that routine?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Botta sniffs. "You'll never stop being my little sister."

She shoves him playfully, nearly knocking him out of his chair, and their laughter spills out through the air.

* * *

Yuan meets Botta's sisters. Well, he meets Sirin by accident, when he's visiting the Asgard Ranch as a member of Cruxis. He tells Botta about it later, and it makes Botta laugh a little because seriously? What are the odds?

Sirin had been assigned to describe to him how they are recovering from the loss of the Angelus Project, as well as the progress with some newer subjects. He listens attentively, but at some point, he thinks that the way she talks as she reports, with the facts and going into just enough detail so as to be informative, but not overwhelming, is something familiar. And then he observes her, and he realizes that he recognizes her eyes because he sees them in Botta on an almost daily basis.

Yuan glances about for cameras before asking quietly, "Do know a man named Botta?"

Sirin turns to him and, oh yes, her expression is cool and a little guarded, and he recognizes that too. Botta had looked the same way that night on the docks when they first met. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you remind me of him."

She narrows her eyes. "…Do you go out to Triet often, Lord Yuan? Because that's where my brother moved to more than twenty years ago."

"I enjoy dropping through Triet every now and again. It's quite timeless."

"I'll bet. And yes, he's my brother."

"I should have guessed," Yuan murmurs. _(Botta talked about his sisters often, and it didn't surprise Yuan to see that this sister at least had his spirit)_

When he tells Botta the story, he wonders if Botta will surprise him with protectiveness. It's one thing to know about his sister being their informant in the Asgard Ranch, but it's another entirely to have met her.

Botta simply types a few more lines of code and asks what he thought of her.

Yuan leans a bit on the console not far from him, thinking about how to phrase his response. He thinks of the striking Sirin, sharp-angled and clever, tall and not quite unafraid of him, but still not kowtowing and stuttering like so many other Desians. "...What a woman," he says finally.

Botta barks a laugh, and his lips quirk into a proud grin. Only his sisters or the children on base ever have that effect on him. "I thought you would have figured that out long before now."

"I thought it needed to be said aloud."

* * *

The day that Yuan meets Olanya is a day that he goes to Iselia to check on the Chosen. He goes with his hood up, hiding his distinctive hair—and it never ceases to amaze Botta how very easily Yuan can disappear into a crowd.

The Chosen is in the Martel Temple for some lessons, and Yuan stops by with a kind smile, saying hello, and mentioning how he's on a pilgrimage. The Chosen is a child, eight years old, and she smiles wide, waving at him.

When the priestess introduces herself, Yuan cannot help but stare a little. He recognizes the name from countless conversations, but seeing her is another matter. She can't be more different than Sirin, her hair frizzy and dark where Sirin had been straighter, and a paler shade of brown. She is petite, and not as sharp-edged, but there is still intelligence in her eyes, and Yuan thinks that if he'd been here to actually harm the Chosen, that a spine of steel would make itself known in Olanya.

He returns to the Renegades several days later, with a sack of potatoes over one shoulder because they'd asked him to bring some when he came back. He and Botta are set to peel them by Delia because "You boys work too hard, and you need to take some time to rest your minds." They'd glanced at each other, trying to decide whether it's worth it to argue, before taking a seat at the table, knives in hand.

"I met an interesting someone when I was checking on the Chosen," Yuan begins. Botta hums in interest, hands working to peel long rinds from the potato. "A priestess named Olanya."

Botta looks up at him. "My sister?"

"I can only assume."

"How is she?"

"Is she not writing anymore?"

"She is. But she doesn't like to make me worry if something's wrong, so I can't always trust what she writes."

"Sounds like someone else we know," Delia comments as she sets a pot of water to boil. "You always wait 'til it's life-threatening to tell us you need medical attention."

"That's different," Botta insists.

"No it isn't," Yuan and Delia tell him.

Botta's nose wrinkles as he grumbles under his breath. Yuan can pick out some words, but he tunes them out. Normal people wouldn't be able to hear it.

"But she seems fine," Yuan says. "Happy."

His eyes are still focused on the potatoes, but a fond smile tilts his lips. "That's good."

* * *

"Tethe'alla has a new Chosen," Douglas reports. Douglas is one of many spies in Tethe'alla, and he is specifically in Meltokio, working as a shopkeeper's assistant in the Lower part of the city.

"Wait, what happened?" Botta asks.

"He killed himself," Douglas says, shedding his jacket. It's autumn in Tethe'alla, even though it's only just beginning to be spring in Sylvarant. "Butler found him in his study."

"Was there a note?"

"No. Not that I heard about anyway, and I'm friends with one of the maids of the place. They announced his death and the passing of the title's gonna officially happen Sunday morning. A dawn ceremony in front of Martel Cathedral."

"It's a shit thing to do," Caterina—who Botta had been teaching how to debug one of the programs—says. "Isn't his son like, ten? And he just lost his father. You can't just put that on a kid's shoulders."

"It's not like he was a model father in the first place," Douglas says darkly.

"Still, though."

"He's leaving that kid alone with that Winters woman. She shouldn't be allowed to raise a kid. Don't know a thing about 'em."

"You mean his _mother_?"

"Yeah. You ever even seen that woman? She _earned_ her last name, lemme tell ya. That woman is cold. And her mood won't be improved with her dead husband having fooled around with a half-elf."

"What? Who?"

Douglas shrugs. "No one knows her name. Or, at least, no one's telling. Got a kid with her. A little girl."

"And she's going to get dragged into this mess," Caterina says. "Poor girl."

"Poor kids. They're both outta luck on this one."

_(It will be a little over a year later that a Tethe'allan newspaper was dropped on a desk between Botta and Yuan. The headline read: Crazed Half-elf Attacks Meltokio Nobility. The article spoke about Mylene de Winters Wilder, who was killed by the jealous mistress of her late husband in front of her young son when they were playing in the snow. There was a photo of little Zelos Wilder, the newest in Tethe'alla's line of Chosens, his eyes hollow and skin pale. There would be a message to Yuan that night from Kvar, who had also read the news. "It will mean good progress for his Cruxis Crystal," Kvar wrote. Yuan had squeezed the console hard enough to dent it, leaving the impression of his fingers in the metal)_

* * *

"Sir," Botta calls as he hears Yuan's footsteps in the hall.

"What is it?"

"New information from Tethe'alla. About the Angelus Project." It has been two years since the experiments had begun in Tethe'alla. "They've found viable subjects."

"Plural?"

"Yes. A pair of sisters from Ozette. Blood results came from a recent doctor visit."

"I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that Anna never had any siblings."

"And that her parents have passed away," Botta adds. He doesn't put it past Kvar to have gone searching for them.

"Have they given them the Exspheres yet?"

"No. Looks like they're taking their age into account."

"Age?" Yuan leans closer to read the screen. "Spirits, they're children. The older girl is only eleven."

"I know. They're debating and running the numbers on how much their age will affect the experiments."

"I'll talk to Yggdrasill. Not that it's likely to make a difference, but…"

"Best of luck," Botta tells him.

_(The conversation didn't go well. Yuan came back to the base a week later, exhausted and slumping in the chair across from Botta. "I tried to convince him that children and adolescents don't work for the experiment. Too many variables with their bodies constantly changing. He said it'll be good research anyway.")_

* * *

"Another failed experiment?" Botta asks as Masahi drops a file on his desk.

"Yes. One of the sisters from Ozette. Looks like they removed the Exsphere and—"

"She turned into a monster," Botta finishes.

"Yes. She was in service to the Bryant family in Altamira. Looks like her master is taking the blame for her death. He confessed to the murder."

"How very noble." Botta flips the file open, staring at the photo of the girl. She's pretty, and very young. Or at least, she has a young face. Much too young to suggest her twenty-two years of age. According to the research notes, the Project had been working in that sense. She had been aging much slower than the other candidates, but had to be given up to an agreement with one of the Exsphere brokers.

And she'd been killed by this…Regal Bryant, Head of the Lezareno Company. There are notes there as well, that the girl had been given to the Project by a third party, an unnamed associate within the Lezareno Company.

"There were rumors that he was in a relationship with the girl."

Botta hopes that that rumor is a lie. He hopes that Regal Bryant is just a man who takes responsibility for his actions, that he hadn't had to kill someone he'd loved or been close to. Botta can never forget Kratos and Anna, can never forget how broken Kratos seems now, how cold and impersonal he is. Alicia Combatir's death is already a tragedy; he just doesn't want it to be worse.

* * *

There are some Renegades in Exire. Personally, Botta doesn't like the floating city. He's not very fond of concept of flying in the first place; to live in a city like that makes him very unsettled. Thankfully, he only has to visit every now and again. There are some Renegades who decide to retire, or that their families want to be somewhere safe while they fight Cruxis. Yuan brings them there, helps them get settled.

_(The first time Yuan showed Botta the floating city, Botta stood there, stunned. The city wasn't exactly what you'd call thriving, but there was life. Some of these people had never seen humans in their lives, having grown up in the city. But the city wasn't clean and smooth. The buildings were old, many crumbling, though they'd worked out ways to make them habitable. When he asked Yuan how long this city had been here, Yuan had gone very still and replied quietly, "Four thousand years.")_

One of the children shrieked Botta's name and nearly barreled into him. He scooped her up, balancing her on his hip. "Hello, Sara."

Her brother runs to greet him too, slightly older, but not old enough that the idea of holding Botta's hand bothers him. They walk with him back to their Uncle Christopher's house, and he smiles at him as he sets Sara down and both children return to their playing.

"I brought some groceries," Botta tells him. "Staples, mostly: rice, pasta. Some sweets."

"I don't think sweets are part of a healthy diet," Christopher laughs. He's a good kid, but he hadn't been able to handle the stress of being a Renegade. He'd gone on a mission and shot a man, but he hadn't been able to live with it. Botta doesn't blame him; killing and harming others is not for everyone.

"That doesn't sound right," Botta replies, grinning a little. "Besides, I know they're hard to come by up here."

"You staying for dinner?"

Botta shakes his head. "No. I have one more stop to make, at the House of Guidance on Fooji."

"Don't lie. You just don't like it here."

"I never said I—" Botta is interrupted by a timid knock on the door. He and Christopher both look as the door creaks open.

The woman is a waifish thing, looking too thin in layers of clothes whose hems are ragged. She has the pointed, delicate features of an elf though, more than most half-elves do, and her hair is a dull silver, hanging tangled about her face.

Christopher glances at Botta before dashing to the door. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"I hate to bother you, but I was wondering if I could borrow some milk. Raine is hungry and the market's closed until tomorrow." Her voice doesn't quite match her appearance. It's a bit hoarse, but still smooth and accented, the pronunciation precise as any high-born human that Botta has ever met.

There is something very off about Christopher's expression as he says, "Sure, Virginia. Give me just a minute to get it for you."

As Christopher disappears into the kitchen, the woman—Virginia's—attention shifts to Botta. She's cradling some bundle in her arms. The child called Raine, Botta assumes.

Virginia's smile is a distant, faded thing. "My child, Raine, is getting so big now."

"How old is she?" Botta asks, stepping forward because he's known many mothers and he hasn't met a one who isn't proud to show off their baby.

"She's turning one next month," Virginia says, and she tilts the bundle towards Botta.

Now that he's closer, he can see that the bundle isn't moving, and—for a moment—he thinks the worst. Thinks this woman is broken and that this is the corpse of her child. But no. Even if other people allow it, Christopher definitely wouldn't. He would make sure the child has a good burial. In the bundle is simply a doll, stitched roughly together.

His smile feels stiff on his face, and now he understands what had been wrong with Christopher. "She's lovely," Botta tells her. "She has your eyes."

Virginia beams at him, and he can see how she must have been stunning in her prime. "That's what I say, but most people don't see it. I have another one on the way too."

Botta glances down, unable to help himself. It's difficult to tell beneath the layers of clothes, but she doesn't look pregnant. "Have you picked out a name?"

"Oh, yes. If it's a girl, I'm going to name her Jean. And if it's a boy, I'm going to name him Genis. What do you think?"

"They're wonderful names." The words are dry in Botta's mouth, even as he feels Christopher brush by him with a bottle of milk. He's too kind for this world; Botta has thought that ever since he had found him sobbing in one of the communal showers, trying to scrape nonexistent blood off his hands.

_(Exire wasn't a place for whole people. Even the ones that had been born and raised here weren't always all there. They held, through the stories of their parents and their grandparents, the crippling fear and paranoia of the outside world. Botta wished that Virginia could be happy, with her two children, but it was long odds that she would be here if she had a good life)_

After Virginia shuffles away, Botta asks, "How long has she been here?"

"Only a year or two," Christopher replies quietly. His arms are crossed, his hands gripping his biceps tightly. "She's harmless, doesn't cause any trouble. The kids like her, and she likes them."

"Do we know where she came from?"

"The Elder says she came from Heimdall."

"She's an elf?"

"Yeah. Looks like Heimdall's Grade A community skills came around again."

He's not wrong. Heimdall has never been accepting of half-elves—Yuan can vouch for that, and he often has, quite vehemently—but now that Botta has the pieces, he can see how she might have been able to hide one half-elven child, but not two. Heimdall's Elder might even have given her some leeway, on account of how high-born she sounds. She might be from one of the more affluent families in Heimdall, but clearly, prejudice had won out.

"Has she said what happened to her children? Her husband?" It would be a longshot to find them, but Botta thinks that with all of Cruxis' resources, they have a good chance. If the children had simply been abandoned, the Renegades can take them in. It's hard enough to be a half-elf without being homeless orphans on top of it.

Christopher shakes his head. "Nope. Not once. Chances are they're dead, all three."

And the loss had broken her. "It's a shame," Botta murmurs. He thinks of his sisters, thinks of his parents, and grandparents, thinks of his great-grandfather on his deathbed and suddenly _misses_ them all fiercely.

"Yeah, it is."

* * *

The oracle comes three weeks after Botta's seventy-ninth birthday.

Yuan calls him to his office and this is how Botta knows. "I told you before: I'm not your assassin," he tells his leader flatly.

Yuan turns the folder on the desk around so Botta can see it. He knows what it says; Sylvarant's newest Chosen is recently sixteen, skilled with chakrams and very diligent in her studies. She's ideal for a Chosen. "There's new information," Yuan tells him. "Her mana signature is the closest match there's been since Spiritua."

Which means that she really can't be allowed to complete the regeneration ritual. Botta sighs.

"Yggdrasill is getting highly suspicious lately," Yuan says. "He wants me on Derris-Kharlan until the Chosen gets started on her journey."

"Why is he so suspicious now?"

"The suspicion has been there ever since Kratos freed Anna. It's more acute now on account of how important this Chosen is to him. If it weren't for that, please understand that I would be killing her myself."

Botta studies him carefully, searching for a lie. He doesn't find one. Yuan is a good leader, most of the time. There are moments when he forgets that he is one, forgets that he can't simply disappear into the background like he had gotten used to doing over the millennia. "How is the research coming? For the Eternal Sword? And the Seed?"

Yuan huffs out a breath. "The Eternal Sword is under Kratos' seal. He's the only one that can release it. As for the Seed, I'm getting close. It seems that the mana links between the Summon Spirits form a cage around the Seed, protecting it and linking the two worlds. I'm not sure what to do with that information yet, but…it's a start."

"…Alright. I'll go."

He doesn't want to. To have to kill the Chosen in the same Temple where his sister lives and works? He had told her everything three years ago, bracing for this day, when his friends—his _family_. Call the Renegades what they are—go to kill the hope of Sylvarant. And Yuan has made progress, trying to find a way to do this without killing, but this girl has a high likelihood of successfully becoming Martel's vessel, and that can't be allowed to happen.

He doesn't want to call it 'the greater good'. He hates that phrase as much as Yuan does, but the concept is similar. The worlds need Colette Brunel to die, even if she really doesn't deserve it.

* * *

He doesn't expect to see Kratos save the children. He is as Botta remembers him—cold, but with a subtle ferocity. The ferocity comes out in his sword, in his steps. Kratos and Yuan fight very differently, and yet, if Botta watches carefully, he can see similarities in the arc of the blades and fluidity of the movements.

When he and the Renegades return back to the base, Yuan is not yet back. Botta helps patch them up; Kratos had gone easy on them, had let them survive. Probably to make a good first impression on the Chosen. The girl has led a sheltered life; the sudden violence of murdering what she sees as Desians might lead to an initial mistrust.

That doesn't mean that the injuries aren't bad ones. Victor is going to have this arm in a sling for a few weeks, and they have more than a few bruised and broken ribs between them.

Botta is carefully threading a needle for stitches when Xenya blows through the door, lips thin. "The assassination failed?"

"Yes. Why? What's happened?" It's hard to fluster Xenya, and right now, she looks like she's just run three miles.

"I was hoping the informants were wrong. They say that Kratos Aurion has accepted a mercenary contract from the Brunel family to guard the Chosen on her journey."

Botta lets out a breath. "I thought that might be the case."

"She's bound to succeed then. None of us, but Lord Yuan are a match for Kratos if it comes to a fight, and there's no way that Yuan would be able to hide his identity from him." That explains her skittish energy. Xenya is from Sybak, and her family isn't living in great conditions now, when Tethe'alla flourishes. She can't imagine how much worse things will get when Tethe'alla begins to fall into decline.

"I'm aware. We'll handle it. The situation right now is too tenuous and new for us to react. Did the informants say anything else?"

She's calming down, breathing a little slower. Botta scoots himself closer to the wound, which runs down the other man's arm. It's deep, and it's bad, but Botta knows the full strength of the seraphs and really, it's a miracle that the arm is still attached at all. "They said that a woman is going with them. A teacher at the school in Iselia. Professor Raine Sage. They're set to leave tomorrow morning."

"…Thank you, Xenya."

* * *

Yuan returns less than a week later. His eyes have that empty aspect to them that dealing with Yggdrasill tends to make happen.

"I couldn't have predicted that he'd send Kratos," Yuan says in lieu of an apology.

"Do you know why he did?"

"It's a matter of growing desperation, I think. And a test of loyalty."

"Of loyalty? Why would—" Botta figures it out before he can even finish the question. "It's been over ten years since Anna died."

"Ten years isn't a big deal to you, is it?"

"Not particularly." Botta is rounding eighty now, and he has more gray in his hair than he'd like—stress from the job, he says—but he still has at least another fifty years left in him. Ten years is a short measurement of time.

"Then how much do you think it matters to us? Ten years is nothing, a blink of an eye. To Yggdrasill, the betrayal might have been yesterday."

"I see. The Desians have put out a bounty on someone who has joined the Chosen."

Yuan stares at the wanted poster that Botta holds up. The picture is crude, but there is no mistaking the name. "Lloyd Irving?"

"Of Iselia. And he's wanted for being in possession of an Exsphere. For Forcystus to be going through all this trouble, the Exsphere has to be very important." Like the Angelus Project.

"It can't be him." Not Kratos' son.

"There is no family by the name of Irving anywhere in the vicinity of Iselia. Our informants tell us that he lives in the Iselia mountains with a dwarf named Dirk only a few miles out from the ranch. It's good odds that it can be him, if he survived. The pieces fit."

_(The thought of Kratos and Anna's little boy actually surviving that massacre was staggering. And when the informants described the boy, Botta could remember one of the ones that had come to the Temple with the Chosen, dressed all in red who fought with twin swords. The real question was, did Kratos know?)_

Yuan reads the description. Brown hair, brown eyes, light skin. Late teen to young adult. Average height. "The pieces fit, but are we putting them together to find the solution or are we twisting the facts to support our theory?"

"You mean our theory that _maybe_ by some long odds, Lloyd managed to survive? I don't see any other solution that could be supported. The Desians have set up search parties for him; they're very desperate to get their hands on that Exsphere. I won't let them get to him first."

Yuan's eyes flicked up to meet Botta's. "Sending out search parties of your own?"

"Not necessarily." Botta plays with a pen, twirling it in his hands. "I'm smarter than the Desians. Our information says that Lloyd and his companion—Genis Sage, the little brother of the professor travelling with the Chosen—are trying to catch up with the Chosen to join her on her journey. The Chosen has yet to reach the Seal of Fire, which means she's in this area. And the first stop outside of Iselia is Triet. Unless the boys get lost out in the desert, they have to stop here for supplies."

"I knew I recruited you for a reason."

* * *

The letter comes late. Almost a week after the fires have ravaged Iselia.

It's a letter from Phaidra Brunel, and it tells him that she had gotten the address from a drawer of old letters in Olanya's desk. The letter also tells him that Olanya had gone into town the day the Desians set the little town ablaze. She had died trapped in a building.

Botta doesn't remember breaking down, doesn't remember retreating to his room to curl in a corner. _(His baby sister, sweet, and teasing, and she'd never smile at him again, or give him her thoroughly unimpressed looks. Never play her songs for him again. She'd survived the humans' bombs only to die by their own people's fires…)_ He does know that Yuan comes in after knocking, not waiting for a response, and he sees the way that Yuan's quick mind puts two and two together.

Yuan is not a very tactile person; at least, not on the giving end. He accepts embraces and kisses on the cheek easily, but he doesn't often touch people first. But he puts his hand on Botta's shoulder, squeezing a little and the touch is a grounding point, is an anchor, and Yuan's eyes are kind, and ancient, and sorrowful when he asks, "Is there anything I can do?" _(He knew better than to tell him it would be okay, that he was sorry. Those words were useless platitudes)_

Botta doesn't remember responding, doesn't know if he does, and he doesn't remember Yuan leaving, but he must have at some point, because Yuan enters the room again—this time without knocking—and there is a tray of food in his hands. Botta knows the smell of it before he can even see what he's brought. Rice, herbs, peppers, seafood.

"I asked Joanna, and she said that this is world-famous, from Palmacosta." And Joanna would know, having lived there for much of her life.

As good as it smells _(And it did smell good, reminding Botta of a full home, with grandparents, and little Sirin, bright-eyed and clever, and oh…Olanya, with her bouncy curls and her sweetness. With the way she used to slam into him with a hug every day after school, and how he would carry her on his shoulders sometimes to watch the fireworks for the Undine Festival…)_ Botta's stomach rebels against the thought of eating. His throat feels tight, and he doesn't think he can do it.

But there are two forks on the tray, and Yuan sits cross-legged across from him, pouring tea into mugs—he doesn't believe in teacups. Not enough volume for tea, he says—and there's also some kind of rum—Botta's nose knows that smell too—that he pours in as well. Yuan sets a fork on Botta's side of the plate, well within easy reach, but doesn't wait for him to start.

After the first bite, Yuan hums. "This is quite good. I hadn't tasted it before."

Yuan keeps talking, low and at a constant tone. It's relaxing, and Botta finds himself able to uncurl enough to reach out with one hand—the letter still tightly clutched in the other—to take his cup of tea. It's steaming still, but the heat is comforting, and it helps to unlock his throat.

Botta's eyes are drawn to the ever-present ring on Yuan's left hand. His wedding ring. _(That was when it clicked. All of this. Yuan had known grief, had known this hollowness. And he was doing the only thing he knew that could possibly help. The idea made Botta want to snort a little; food as a healing substance. A mother's remedy. Had it been from his mother that Yuan learned it? Or had it been from Martel, a woman who was practically one to Mithos?)_

His voice croaks out words without conscious thought. "…What was she like?"

Yuan stops his stream of words, and there's an instinctive defensiveness that flickers across his face. But it's gone just as quickly as it came. Yuan pushes the rice around with his fork, lost in thought. _(His first thoughts weren't what Botta was looking for. He wasn't looking for a one word response. He wanted to know that this was all worth it, that Martel had been a woman worth doing all of this for)_

"…she loved music," Yuan says finally. "The soldiers that went to her infirmary…there were bad nights all the time. Nightmares and people terrified of going to sleep, afraid of what they would see. She would sing, or play her flute. She played elven lullabies, and slow versions of bar songs, anything to help them sleep."

When Botta doesn't really respond, just stays with his shoulders hunched, Yuan hesitates before continuing. "She was always too helpful for her own good." _(That's what got her killed in the first place, Yuan didn't say. Going out to a farm to help them out and getting attacked along the way. Sometimes, Yuan wished she had been capable of being more selfish, but those times, he felt ashamed. Martel would never regret going out to help those people)_ "There was one time that…this little boy lost his dog. Kid must have been maybe six years old and she had a real soft spot for kids…"

Botta smiles a little at the story of where the dog got stuck and how Martel had ended up a muddy, swampy mess, but she'd come out of there beaming, the dog squirming happily in her arms, trying to lick her face. It isn't the picture of a perfect goddess, and he is incredibly grateful for that. His stomach is churning anymore, and he sets his mug of tea down, so he can pick up the fork without letting go of the letter.

The first bite floods his tongue with flavor, and it is only in this moment that he realizes that he hasn't eaten since breakfast before dawn. He forces himself to slow down, to not devour the entire plate. Yuan sets his fork down and pushes the tray towards him, picking up his mug.

Yuan tucks one knee up, resting an arm on it, eyes on the remnants of his tea. "…The world wasn't ready for her."

Botta glances up, but doesn't really know how to respond.

"Martel," Yuan clarifies. "She was…independent, and stubborn, and brilliant, but the world wasn't ready for that. Not from a woman and certainly not from a half-elf." _(The world didn't deserve her, Yuan wanted to say. And he hadn't deserved her either)_

Botta's hand tightens on the fork before he releases it, letting it clatter on the tray. "…She didn't deserve to die."

The way Yuan looks at him makes Botta feel the need to clarify, but he doesn't. He lets the words hang there, but Yuan understands, as Botta had known he would. "It's been my experience," Yuan begins. "That most people who die don't deserve it. And that people who really deserve to die, don't."

Something in Yuan's tone when he says that has Botta looking at him. "...Do you think you deserve to die?"

Yuan's lips twist into something bitter, and wry. "I'm a monster, Botta. _Billions_ of people have died because of what we did, and your sister was only one of them. So, yes, I think I deserve to die. But I won't. Not until Cruxis is stopped. Otherwise, it's just a coward's way out."

Botta's lips thin. "It's a coward's way out either way. You're right; you have done horrible things. But you've done a lot of good things too. All of us—every single Renegade—our lives are better than anything we could've hoped for back where we came from. You gave us something worth fighting, and living for. If you decide to remove your Crystal after Yggdrasill is taken down, and you die a wrinkly old man, that's one thing. But letting yourself be killed in the name of Cruxis' downfall when it could've been avoided? _That's_ cowardly, and you're disrespecting the memory of every single one of those billions of people that have died."

Yuan stares at him for a long minute before huffing a little. "You don't intend to make this easy for me, do you?"

"No. Olanya deserves better than that."

"Alright. You have my word, Botta. No easy way out."

Botta dips his head in thanks.

* * *

Botta finds Yuan standing in front of a window on the Flanoir base. There's a glass of whiskey in his hands, and somehow, despite the fact that he looks as normal as ever in a shirt and trousers, he looks more distant than ever.

"They got away." It's not exactly a shock. Botta had never expected to honestly beat Kratos in a fight alone, let alone with the other group members joining in.

"I thought they might."

Botta pours himself his own glass of whiskey, and sits on the desk. The chair in this office is horribly uncomfortable, but then, he's not the one who has to be sitting on it, so he can't complain. He doesn't say anything, just sips at his drink, letting it burn his throat and give his limbs some extra warmth. _(There was no funeral for Olanya. The fires had taken everything. There was a mourning for all those who had died in the fires, but…Botta couldn't bring himself to attend. It seemed horribly impersonal. He and Sirin had their own memorial. They made Olanya an empty grave in the outskirts of Palmacosta, on a cliff where she could see the sea)_

Yuan snorts finally, tossing back the rest of his drink. "It's definitely Kratos' son."

The way he says it, it's more than a fact. There are memories lingering there, and Botta considers leaving them lie, but instead he asks, "How so?"

Yuan turns and walks towards the desk. "…he looks like them. He's certainly got Anna's spirit."

"I didn't see much of the resemblance."

"You wouldn't." Yuan pours himself another drink; the Renegades have tried to get him drunk. On multiple occasions. They've come to the conclusion that either angels don't have the ability to get drunk, or it simply takes a _massive_ amount of alcohol. "…He has Anna's nose. And her coloring. But the shape of his face, his ears—that's all Kratos."

 _(Botta could push the issue, could say he still couldn't see it. It wouldn't even be lying; he couldn't see it at all. But he knew that that was because the resemblance that Yuan saw was not this Kratos—this broken, serious, cold adult. Botta was sure that the person that Yuan saw in Lloyd was a much younger Kratos, likely the one he'd grown up with. Maybe Lloyd_ did _look just like Kratos when he'd been seventeen. Yuan was the only one left who would know)_

"So what now?" Botta asks. "We've already proven that we won't be able to get to the Chosen to kill her. Not when she's protected like this."

"So we don't. Kratos has to turn on them, has to take the Chosen to the Tower for her to complete the ritual. That will be the moment he lets his guard down, and that's when we will be able to get to her."

* * *

Botta's first instinct upon being woken is to grab for the knife he keeps beneath his pillow. His eyes haven't quite adjusted when he recognizes the person by his bedside.

He releases the knife, rubbing at his eyes. "Yuan? Wha's going on?"

Yuan doesn't answer right away, but his lips are pressed into a thin line and there's a piece of paper in his left hand. Neither of those things bodes well. Botta sits up, more awake now. "Yuan?"

The seraph lets out a slow breath. "We just got a report. The Desians attacked Luin. It's completely destroyed."

Botta's lungs are paralyzed. They don't want to work. "Sirin?" he finally manages.

"…She was discovered. They went to kill her on her day off, and took the rest of the city with them. According to the ranch's records, she helped one of the prisoners escape. A man named Pietro, a Luin native."

_(He remembered that name. Sirin had mentioned it in a few of her letters. Pietro was her neighbor.)_

Botta curls into himself unconsciously, his heartbeat thudding loudly in his throat. "She's gone?"

"Yes. And they know you're the one she was sharing information with. The Desians are looking for you." Which means that they're likely on the way to Triet now, searching for him. They'd tear Triet apart, just for him.

His hands clench into fists, fingernails digging into the skin. _(Haven't they stolen enough from the world? They had to take Botta's sisters too? All that was left of his family?)_ "Let them come."

* * *

The Desians never reach Triet. Botta doesn't let them. They barely reach the edge of the desert, and the outskirts of the Ossa Trail. Here, in this place, Botta is in his element. His magic is not affiliated with water, like so many would guess with his history. His magic comes from the earth, the unshakable foundation, the unyielding power.

The Desians that had been sent after him die in a rockslide. The few that manage to survive die with a sword through their chests. The few that had trailed behind, that hadn't gotten caught up in it, attack with guns and swords, and Botta makes sure to kill them too.

By the end of it all, Botta stands at the base of the mountain, little trembles making their way up his body. When he comes to himself, Yuan is standing there, cloak about his shoulders, expression unreadable. In that instant, Yuan looks every bit of his age, all four thousand plus years.

Yuan doesn't move closer, but simply calls Botta's name.

Botta can't blame him. He's the one standing in the middle of a massacre, after all. And he doesn't know what he means to tell him, to let Yuan know that it's alright, he recognizes him, but he knows that the words that come out aren't the ones he'd been thinking of. "…She's gone, Yuan. They're all gone."

He doesn't remember when he drops his sword, doesn't remember Yuan carefully leading him away. He doesn't remember being taken to the base, and being sat in the chair that is unofficially his. _(His sisters were gone. Dead because of the Desians, because of_ Cruxis _. They hadn't deserved it; had only been trying to live their lives the best way they could in this damned world. And now they were gone, and this rage wasn't. The rage was still there, roiling underneath his skin and Botta_ hated _it. He just wanted his sisters back, just wanted to be left alone, and that was when the tears started because Botta never thought that he could sympathize with Mithos Yggdrasill)_

Botta flinches as Yuan dabs some antiseptic on his knuckles. His hands are raw, and bloody; at some point, he must have just beaten away at the Desians, but Botta doesn't remember doing that either.

"Why did you follow me?" Botta asks finally, his voice hollow.

"Because I know what grief does to people." Yuan's hands are gentle as they wrap bandages around Botta's knuckles. "And I wasn't about to let you die because of some suicidal berserker fight."

"I took care of them."

"I never had any doubt that you would." Yuan gives Botta his hands back, but reaches up to inspect a burn along Botta's hairline. One of the laser shots from the guns. "But this would be a hell of a time to prove me wrong, which you are very fond of doing."

Botta wipes at his wet eyes with the back of one hand, the bandages scratchy against his skin. Yuan offers him a handkerchief before he sets about prodding gently at Botta's torso, checking for anything broken. No bloodstains—none that are fresh, anyway—so nothing had broken skin, but Botta hisses in pain. Yuan glances up at him, before telling him it's likely he's got a fractured or cracked rib. Yuan heals his ribs with a few words, the warmth of healing mana settling in between Botta's ribs, nestling beside his lungs.

"Anything else?" Yuan asks, and it's a valid question. This wouldn't be the first time that Botta withholds information from the Healers, but this time, he's not, so he simply shakes his head.

"How—I don't know what to do now," Botta confesses through the lump in his throat. "Without them." _(His family had been his life until now, despite what great-grandpapa had warned. He was a dutiful son and grandson, an older brother. But now? What was he now?)_

Yuan leans his forearms on his thighs. "You fight on. In their name. You make sure that they didn't die for nothing. You have to live their share too."

 _I know what grief does to people_. "Is that what you do?" Botta asks quietly.

For a moment, Botta thinks that Yuan isn't going to answer, that the question had been too close, too personal. But the moment passes. "…I try to," Yuan says finally. "I don't always succeed, but I try."

When he pronounces Botta healthy, he tells him to take the other room and sleep, that he needs it. Botta wonders why Yuan doesn't just send him back to his own room, but as he is dimly shedding the rest of his bloodstained clothes, he realizes that the door isn't quite closed. It's enough for privacy, and the illusion of a closed room, but Botta can hear the scratching of a pen against paper, the clacking of keys. He is not alone.

* * *

The only time that Botta ever says the sentence, "All my family is dead," in the presence of the Renegades, he is swiftly and soundly silenced.

Chandra leaps into his lap, all of twelve years old and entirely too old to be doing that, and wraps her arms around his neck. She isn't the only one. Botta can feel Donovan nearby, and Lucas. A dozen other voices rise in protest even as Botta is engulfed in warm bodies hugging him.

When he tries to voice his confusion, he can hear Delia saying. "Don't be ridiculous, boyo. You've got us, haven't you?"

_(What a silly thing to forget. These people were family, even if not by blood. Botta hugged Chandra as tightly as he could, and Donovan brushed a kiss against his temple, and Lucas was gripping his shoulder tight. Someone overbalanced in all of it, and they collapsed against each other, and that was the first time that Botta laughed since Yuan had told him that Luin was destroyed)  
_

* * *

The wound is a nasty one, for all that it isn't life-threatening. Noana, the best Healer that the Renegades have, has already tried to seal the wound up, but it won't close all the way. Not with magic. Yuan's nose wrinkles when she tells him she's going to have to stitch him up the rest of the way.

After Noana has finished the stitches, Botta tells her that he can finish the rest. As he goes to wrap the bandages, he says, "You went to kill them."

"Someone made it very clear that I don't have personal assassins running around."

"…Kratos was able to do this to you in a fight?" Botta has always thought that Yuan and Kratos would be pretty evenly matched if they ever truly did go at it.

Yuan shakes his head. "No. I was shooting at him from behind. Lloyd warned him and he reacted on instinct."

Botta ties off the bandages, double-checking that they won't be too tight. Yuan may not need to breathe, but his blood still needs to be able to circulate. "…I'm taking a team to the Tower. With any luck, the Chosen won't have finished the ritual yet."

"Be careful. Kratos won't be playing a mercenary anymore; he won't hold back."

"Yessir."

* * *

"I hope this was worth it," Botta says lowly. They'd lost good men and women in the Tower, distracting Yggdrasill while they had dragged the Chosen and her group to safety. The funeral would be on Monday.

"If this works, it will be."

Botta glances up at Yuan. "Do you believe that?" A better world is something of an abstract ideal to reach for, despite them having been working towards it for the better part of a century. It's great in theory, fighting for the freedom of choice, for life, but every time people die for this ideal, Botta has to wonder if it really is worth it.

With a huffed breath, Yuan leans back in his chair. "I have to."

Botta has been ready to die for this ideal ever since Yuan came to recruit him all those years ago. Perhaps even before that. Had he been ready to die for the idea of Sirin having better opportunities? For half-elves not having to fear going to church in case of bombings? He's not sure. The question had never been asked of him then. These days, he knows the answer.

Yuan lives and breathes the idea of a free world, a united world. He doesn't have a choice; otherwise, he'd go insane with the knowledge of all the things he's done, the things he's done in the name of the woman he loves.

Botta may have been ready to die for an ideal for most of his life, but he had never thought that it could make him happy until Yuan had found him. Until he'd given him a home with the Renegades.

* * *

Yuan is filled with a frantic energy two days after the funeral. Noana asks Botta to find him because he shouldn't be overexerting himself yet; he's not fully healed yet.

Botta finds him on his hands and knees on the office floor, where Lloyd and the others had stood just hours previously. "Sir?"

"Have you seen my ring, Botta?"

Not once in forty years of knowing him has Botta ever seen him without his ring. It's as part of him as his eyes, and skin, and wings. "When did you notice it was missing?"

"After they left." Yuan doesn't flinch as he tries to get up, but the way that he is so careful to _not_ react to his wound makes Botta hold out his arm to offer support.

"We would have looked for it," Botta says as he hauls him to his feet. "You should be saving your strength."

"I need to find it, Botta."

"I know." To his knowledge, it is the only thing that Yuan has left of Martel. "And we will, but panicking won't help." Yuan bristles at the description, but Botta doesn't let him interrupt. "Get some rest, I'll search here, and recruit some of the kids to help search the rest of the base."

He doesn't look calmer, but perhaps his wound hurts him more than he lets on because Yuan relents.

* * *

They don't find the ring.

It's not anywhere on either base.

The idea of not having his wedding ring is scary to Yuan, Botta can tell. He's tenser, his temper closer to the surface, his words a bit more venomous than they're probably intended to be.

_(The ring was his anchor. Yuan was afraid that he would succumb to his insanity as easily as Mithos had, would break as far as Kratos had without it. Martel was always the strong one, not him)_

* * *

"You think there's a traitor?" Yuan repeats.

"Several. I believe Mizuho has managed to infiltrate us. Lloyd and the others have a direct line to Mizuho through the summoner. We've had supplies going missing, from the Tethe'alla side only. And it's mostly food and medicine. Not the technology that thieves would steal in order to sell it to Sybak's laboratories or to the Lezareno Company."

"Things that a poor village like Mizuho would need, particularly since they're in poor standing with the crown at the moment." Yuan drums his fingers on the desk. Not with his left hand. His right. The bareness of his finger on the left hand bothers him more than he likes to admit. "And they're more than happy to help out a third party, one that is willing to work with them to help Mizuho get out from under the crown's thumb."

"I'll get a list of the recruits from the last two years." Since Sheena Fujibayashi had been given the task to assassinate the Chosen. There had been training before then, Botta knows, brushing up on skills that may have grown rusty.

"Make it the last four," Yuan tells him.

At first, Botta doesn't understand why it's such a specific number. Then he realizes. Four years ago had been the first time that the Renegades went to Meltokio to talk to Royal Family, to distribute Exspheres with Key Crests to those that met their requirements, to discuss funding for research. Four years since Mizuho would have found solid evidence of the Renegades' existence.

"Yessir."

* * *

The silent alarm goes off on Botta's screen; it gives him the location of the person who activated it. In one of the offices on the lower floors. Botta is on his feet and moving, taking his sword that he'd left in the corner by the door. Since he'd begun finding evidence of the traitors—no solid identities yet. Mizuho is _very_ good at what they do—he'd started keeping it with him, even on base.

It's not often that Botta is on the Flanoir base. He doesn't like the cold, and they don't usually need him over here. But this winter has been a bad one, and it's damaged some of the systems. He's taught others the technology, but they'd sounded frustrated over the video call this morning.

_("You know I won't be around forever," Botta told them when he arrived._

_They laughed. "Please, Botta. Everyone knows that you're gonna be the one to outlive us all. You're too stubborn to die."_

_"Oh is that what they're calling it these days?" Botta muttered, but there was still a smile on his face because these people were still his family)_

Marc is on the floor, back against the wall and there's a bloody smear going down from his trying to steady himself as he got to the floor. The room smells of fresh mana, and magic, and Marc is pretty abysmal at magic, to be honest.

Marc had one of the keycodes to the Rheairds today. After Lloyd and his group had infiltrated the Triet base, it's something they'd begun doing to try to prevent more thefts.

"Marc?" Botta kneels in front of him, checking his pulse. "Talk to me, Marc."

His blue eyes creak open, and he's pale from blood loss. "Hey, Botta."

"What happened?" Noana should still be on base. She tends to stay in Flanoir; her family lives here, after all. They really need a better system of communicating to each other on a personal level. Surely, personal communicators can be made?

"'s Lloyd 'n the others. Tried to stop 'em."

"Wonderful," Botta huffs.

Marc smiles a little. "Messin' with your plans, huh?"

"You would know all about that." While he's dependable, Marc isn't always good at following orders.

Botta is not a Healer in any sense of the word. He struggles to cast a decent First Aid, but he tries now because hopefully he can at least slow the bleeding down before he finds Noana.

He's right, of course. His First Aid does very little, and he takes a roll of bandages that all the guards have on their belts for emergencies and starts to bind the worst of the wounds.

"This is not going to be pleasant."

Marc snorts, but doesn't say anything. He hisses a little as the bandages wind their way around his torso. Lloyd and his companions can say what they like, preach about peace, but they are warriors in every sense. They might not kill people outright, but leaving them to die is just as bad. Personally, Botta thinks it's worse.

When Botta glances up, Marc is nodding off. He slaps him gently on the cheek a few times. "Stay awake. I'm going to find Noana, but you need to stay awake for me. Understand?"

"Yessir."

He finds Yuan before he finds Noana, which is kind of a shock. He'd seen Yuan early that morning, back on the Triet base sipping his coffee and going over blueprints for a new security system for the Rheairds. The passcodes are only temporary.

"Sir?" Botta doesn't give himself time to question. "Lloyd and the others—"

"Are here. The Chosen got the message to me when they arrived."

"And Marc is in critical condition in the office one floor down. They attacked him for the passcode."

"I'll take care of him. Find Noana, warn her about the situation, and get the locations of the other guards who have the passcodes. We might be able to cut them off."

"Yessir."

* * *

Fighting alongside Yuan isn't exactly effortless, but they know each other's movements by now, can predict how the other moves and can work around it. Botta and Yuan have very different ways of fighting, despite the fact that Yuan had been the one training Botta most of the time. Where Botta prefers to stay grounded, Yuan leaps and flips through the air—heights and distances that should be impossible aided by his increased strength. Botta is slower with his sword, preferring strength over a flurry of attacks, as Yuan does with his Swallow, the double-headed spear constantly twirling and dancing in his hands. The ground shakes when Botta uses magic, the earth moving easily under his mana, but the very air vibrates and stills whenever Yuan's lightning slices through the air.

Despite their partnership, they're still defeated. Botta goes down first—not that he expects any different. He's bleeding from more than a few places, and his left arm is twitching involuntarily thanks to one of the lightning blades from the Chosen that he hadn't quite been able to avoid. Yuan is still going strong, though, fending them off even when a Summon Spirit explodes into the room, the hot waves of Efreet's mana taking up all the space.

_(Yuan wasn't fighting at his best though. This, Botta knew. He was fighting harder than Botta had ever seen him, but there was a lack of survival instinct in it all. He knew that Yuan had the capability to let out what equaled a small electromagnetic wave, certainly enough to fry all the circuits in a room this size, but there wasn't that threat to his life to make his instincts respond that way)_

Yuan does fall, in the end. He's on one knee, breathing hard, weapon knocked away. His eyes are still sparking with defiance and, if he would be so inclined, he could still keep fighting, but there is no point in fighting to the death right now, so he surrenders.

Botta staggers to him, his legs shaky, but not that's out of pure exhaustion. He can feel a burn on his back from one of the half-elf boy's spells stretching and itching painfully. Before he can find the strength to talk, the ground trembles and quakes beneath them, and he has to grab onto the wall for balance.

Earthquakes don't happen in this part of Tethe'alla. Ever.

"Sir, could a mana link have been broken?" Botta asks, even as he helps Yuan to his feet.

"Possibly. Investigate the cause of this earthquake immediately." Yuan pauses, taking a look at Botta. "Find Noana first," he amends. "Get yourself healed up, then investigate."

"You should get looked at yourself." Botta can see a few wounds on Yuan, none that seem particularly life-threatening, but still.

"Not right now. I'm going to look in on the injured and I need to review the data on the Angelus Project."

He'd mentioned that Lloyd's Exsphere is evolving. Anna's Exsphere had been very advanced, the most progress that had been made with Cruxis Crystal research yet. "Just make sure Noana doesn't see you," Botta warns. "She'll have your head for neglecting your injuries again."

"Of course not." The curve of Yuan's lips is almost a smirk. "She'll be too busy fussing over you."

"I don't much appreciate being used as a decoy," Botta tells him, accepting the offered help to walk. His left leg isn't feeling great either, but at least he can move them.

"Used? No, Botta, you volunteered for this, remember?"

"How could I forget?"

* * *

"I don't believe that there will be any permanent nerve damage," Noana says, looking up at Yuan. "But I would prefer a second opinion. You seemed like the best person to ask."

Yuan nods and pulls up a stool in front of Botta, observing the damage left by the lightning. Noana had healed the burns, but there are still traces of damaged skin left, as well as tendrils of scar tissue running from Botta's shoulder to his thigh, even scraping along down his calf a little bit. He asks if Botta can bend his arm and leg, if he can lift them. Botta does. He asks Botta to rotate his shoulder, and turn his leg. He can.

When it comes to curling his fingers and toes, Botta struggles. Some of his fingers respond, others simply twitch, and his ring finger refuses to do much of anything at all. His toes curl with obvious effort, and the curl is a loose one.

Botta doesn't jump when Yuan sets his hands carefully along the scars. He flinches a moment later, but that's from what feels like static electricity as Yuan reaches out with his mana, feeling the path that the lightning had taken, feeling the remnants of it beneath Botta's skin.

"I agree with you, Noana," Yuan says. "It doesn't look like permanent damage to me. It was a relatively low power spell, and your affiliation for earth gives you a natural resistance to it. It will take some time, and some physical therapy, but you should be able to recover fairly easily."

Botta nods, stretching his shoulders. They're tense and tight and all he wants right now is a hot bath and some sleep. "What about the others?"

"They got beat pretty bad," Yuan admits. "Marc is fine. Currently hooked up to an IV and being very vocal about his dislike of needles. Sara got lucky and just got knocked out. Her daughter is set to wake her up every few hours, just in case of a concussion. Lucas got a bad hit to the back—it's all just one big bruise—and Noana knocked him out so he can sleep for a while without wrenching it. Hopefully, it's just bruised and sore without damage to the spine or nerves, but we can't know more until he wakes up."

"Does Donovan know?"

"He's been informed."

"And has Noana taken a look at you?" The Healer had stepped out of the room to check in on her other patients—the guards with the passcodes are the worst off, but there are plenty of other guards that were injured in the line of duty. They're lucky; no deaths this time.

"I'm fine. It's soreness and bruises, mostly."

Botta doesn't believe that. Not with the way that Lloyd Irving fights, not with the Chosen's chakrams whirling through the air, with the traitor Chosen's sword and dagger always in close. The summoner fights with daggers too; not often, she seems to prefer her spelled pieces of paper, but there are daggers on her person and Botta has no doubts that she knows how to use them.

"Did you take care of them yourself?"

"Yes." Yuan knows Healing magic. He doesn't specialize in it, but he knows how, and even if he can't fix the problem, he has studied people enough over the millennia to at least be able to recognize injuries and health problems. "There's no point in bothering Noana with anything that's not that serious."

 _That_ , Botta believes.

_(Yuan knew the stress that Healers were put under, particularly when there weren't very many, or at least, not very many who could handle serious injuries. Botta wondered if Yuan had learned to hide his wounds so that Martel wouldn't be concerned, so that she wouldn't waste mana she didn't have to spare on him)_

Botta pushes himself to his feet slowly, giving himself a chance to find his balance on a half-responsive leg. "I'm going to look into the mana links."

"Don't overwork yourself," Yuan tells him.

"Don't be ridiculous, sir. I would never do something like that."

Yuan snorts, but doesn't call him on the lie.

* * *

Botta glares at the marbles in mild frustration. There are ten, grouped together on a hand towel that's been laid out on the floor. He's supposed to grip each marble individually with his toes and move them to the other side of the towel. It's a movement that Botta has done a dozen times before when he doesn't feel like bending down to reach his socks or a fallen pen. It's a simple exercise, but his left foot isn't quite up to it yet.

"I'm glad to see that mild paralyzation hasn't affected your personality."

Botta looks up from the marbles. Yuan is leaning in the doorframe, dressed in loose clothing that he usually only wears for sparring purposes. He's been absent from the base for the past few days, called up to Cruxis for some matter or another, but any trips to Cruxis never leave Yuan in the best frame of mind.

"Welcome back," Botta greets, stretching out his foot as much as he can. It's starting to cramp from trying to curl it around the marbles.

"May I watch?" Yuan asks.

Botta waves him to one of the chairs in the room. "I'm surprised you didn't bring your dinner so you could enjoy the show with it."

"Bitterness doesn't suit you, Botta."

But Yuan doesn't say anymore, just watching him intently, so Botta continues with his exercise.

After a good ten minutes of trying, and managing to get one of the marbles halfway before his foot spasms, Yuan says, "You're doing pretty well, considering it hasn't been so long since the injury."

"I should be doing better."

"Your expectations of yourself are entirely too high. Lightning is not an easy element to recover from. Fire burns, light sears, earth bruises and breaks, water overwhelms, and wind slices, but lightning is something else. Its energy goes internally first. It's attracted to the nervous system, which runs on its own electrical impulses. The wounds that are leftover on the skin," Yuan gestures to Botta's left side, which still bears the scattering of scars. "Are a byproduct. The burns lightning causes are severe, but perfectly fixable. The internal damage, not necessarily."

Botta understands the science of it, understands how his injury works, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating to watch his body fail to do something so damnably simple. "…Is that why you prefer it? To fight?" Because he's seen Yuan do basic spells with the other elements, has taught them to the Renegades, but he never uses them otherwise.

Yuan goes still for a moment, and Botta thinks that perhaps his question has crossed some invisible line. "…It was never a conscious decision, on my part. I wasn't formally taught magic until I was already an adult." He tilts his head away, looking past the floor. "The first time I ever used it, I was being put in chains. It was instinctive, and I didn't realize what I'd done, but one moment, they were locking me into the chains, and the next, they were on the ground, still twitching, but dead. I almost knocked myself unconscious, using up far too much mana."

In chains, he says. Botta tries to picture people—soldiers, like the Desians are—trying to clamp irons on Yuan. It's something that doesn't quite compute inside his head. The Yuan he knows is a man that has been broken, yes—he's absolutely shattered—but he is steel at those broken places, has learned to hone the edges of himself into blades. He is no one's slave, is too proud and defiant for servitude.

_(There were numbers, on Yuan's forearm. Botta had seen them a couple of times, over the decades. He'd never asked, but he knew a brand when he saw one. Yuan had been a slave, once. And he had broken the world rather than return to being one again)_

"You could have decided to use a different element, once you were trained."

"Perhaps," Yuan admits. He tosses his head a little to get his bangs out of his face. "But that would be like asking you to use something other than earth magic."

The idea makes Botta's skin crawl. Earth is solid, sturdy, dependable, but not quite predictable. He thinks of his attempts at water magic, at how all his attempts had simply sloshed water all over the floor. "I see your point."

Snorting, Yuan sits up. "It usually doesn't take you that long. Trust me to know my element, Botta. You're doing more than fine."

* * *

Donovan visits several days after that. Botta is at a computer, typing as fast as he can with one working hand. "Should've known that nothing would stop you from working."

Botta turns to greet him. "I've been getting behind in my work."

With a sound of disbelief, Donovan leans forward, squinting a little to read the screen. "Oh yes, that's right. For you, 'behind' is still a week ahead of everyone else." With a bare moment of hesitation, he sets a hand gently on Botta's left shoulder. "How do you feel?"

"Like I'm moving at a snail's pace in almost everything," Botta tells him honestly. "It gets a bit annoying."

"You know that's not what I meant."

"I'll be fine, Don. At the rate I'm going, Noana gives it another two weeks until I'm back to one hundred percent. How's Lucas doing?"

Donovan crosses his arms, leaning against the console, his plain gold ring catching the light. "Better than you, at the moment. But that's because he's not dumb enough to overwork himself. One of his spinal disks got moved out of place, so Noana is trying to figure out how to fix it. She went to consult with her cousin yesterday."

Noana comes from a long line of medical practitioners, although she's one of the first to try applying magic to it. Her cousin—a few times removed—runs a very successful clinic in Flanoir. "Did she find good news?"

"A bit. The spine is real sensitive, so she's trying to figure out the least invasive and painful way to fix it that still has a good success rate."

Seeing the tension lining the other man's shoulders, Botta says, "If anyone can do it, it's Noana. She's never let us down before. Lucas will be good as new before winter."

Donovan hums low in his throat. "I hope you're right." After a moment, he says, "Come to lunch with me. I could use the company."

Lunch? Botta checks the clock. He hadn't realized how long he'd been working. "Lunch sounds wonderful." He takes his crutches from where he had left them leaning against another console. Noana had suggested using a cane instead, and Botta had tried it, but he hadn't been able to get the hang of walking with it.

He struggles for a moment to stand, balance wavering, and Donovan reaches out automatically to steady him before he regains his balance, crutches under his arms.

Botta can't quite maneuver fast with the crutches, not with one still-healing arm, but he'd refused to use a wheelchair. Donovan doesn't seem to mind, however, as they make their way to the kitchen.

The kitchen in the Flanoir base is infinitely warmer than the one in Triet, but that's mostly to do with Oscar's—"Call me Oz"—influence. He'd taken it upon himself to paint the walls a buttery color, and had let some of the kids paint their handprints onto the walls with their names and ages written next to it. It's become something of a tradition now, for all the kids on base to put their hands on the wall. Herbs hang from baskets on the ceiling and in little pots along the counters, and there is a large fireplace that is often people's first stop once they get back to base.

Oz grins at them as they step inside, stirring something in a pot. He's not a fighter, Oz. He's helped defend the base before, and has the scar across his eyebrow and temple to prove it, but he's never been a warrior. He helps Noana out very often, mixing up herbal remedies for headaches and stomach cramps, as well as making thin, but nutritional soups for her patients.

"I'm impressed, Donovan. I thought nothing less than the second coming of the Goddess herself could get Botta out of that room."

Oz is also one of the few people in the Renegades who continues to believe in a Goddess—even if it isn't Martel, necessarily—after learning the truth.

Donovan just returns the grin. "You should know that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach, Oz. And with your cooking? It ain't exactly hard."

Botta maneuvers his way to the table, sitting carefully before leaning his crutches against the wall. "You make it sound like I'm cheap, Don."

"No, no. Never cheap," Donovan laughs. "Just easy."

Lunch is strips of meat mixed with rice, corn and beans with cheese sprinkled overtop. It's an old family recipe, Oz claims, a classic from Altamira. Botta nearly inhales it; he hadn't realized he was so hungry, and even though Noana keeps reminding him that his body is healing, that he needs more fuel than usual, he can never quite remember it.

Botta doesn't quite feel up to talking, but he soaks in Donovan and Oz's presence, their laughing conversation as Oz finishes what he reveals to be some kind of custard. "I'm making donuts," he says. "Or, I'm trying to."

Oz has to shoo Donovan away from stealing some of the custard, and a few other Renegades slip inside, greeting Botta and inquiring about his recovery. They don't push though, and the room fills with voices and arguments interspaced with laughter, and it helps Botta relax, letting the warmth of the room soak into him.

* * *

The day that Noana pronounces Botta healed, he goes back to Triet. There's still work to do.

"Have you felt the earthquakes on this side?" Botta asks Yuan when he returns.

"Yes. By my count, they should have formed pacts with nearly all the Summon Spirits at this rate." Yuan looks Botta up and down. "How do you feel?"

"Recovered and ready."

Yuan snorts softly. "Good to hear."

* * *

"I've been researching the mana links," Yuan says instead of a greeting.

"What have you found?"

"Remember how they form a sort of cage around the Seed? The Summon Spirits of the declining world are responsible for the bulk of the Seed's protection."

"Because in a declining world, it's unlikely that anyone would have the knowledge or technological capabilities to ever be able to do anything about it," Botta says. "Understandable. Where does that leave us though?"

"If we're able to hit the Seed with enough mana, it will germinate properly."

"But, isn't Martel tied to the Seed? What will happen to her?"

Yuan's left hand clenches a little, thumb rubbing at the skin where his ring used to be. "If she would be revived, the Seed would be absorbed into her. The reverse, I assume, is also true."

"And that stops Mithos' plan. But neither world has enough mana to do it."

Yuan unrolls a set of blueprints. Botta doesn't recognize the language it's written in, but there are translations scribbled in underneath. "The Mana Cannon that Rodyle has been trying to build."

"He's actually succeeding?"

"Yes. It's nearly complete, actually. If we can take control of the mana reactor—"

"We can find a way to feed mana into the Cannon to shoot to the Great Seed."

"Precisely."

Botta taps his fingers against the table. "Rodyle's ranch is a maze. He has _dragons_ onsite, and a failsafe to flood the entire building. It would take a lot of us to take that ranch, and I don't want to risk that many of our lives."

"See if you can find another way into the ranch. I'll see about going to the ranch for an inspection, getting a more accurate look at what the defenses look like."

"Yessir."

* * *

After another week, Botta finds Yuan down in the training rooms, running through his forms as he does every morning. The Swallow looks weightless in his hands, whirling and striking smooth and sharp, in perfect tune with his steps.

_(Botta couldn't quite stop the creep of envy in his thoughts. He'd been so stiff when he woke up today, every day since the paralyzation. It took long minutes, sometimes even an hour, before his leg, or his arm would respond properly. Like a limb that fell asleep. He'd collapsed getting out of bed more than once because of it, stumbling about his room trying to catch his balance and he hated it. He wanted to be strong again, wanted to be able to stand on his own two feet without worrying if one of them was going to fall out from beneath him)_

Botta sits and waits for him to be done. He can see places where openings are left for the enemy to take, can see pauses where spells would be formed.

After it's over, Yuan steps back slowly, taking a long breath before he looks to Botta. "What is it?"

It's nothing urgent; if it had been, Botta would have interrupted him. "Do you feel up to a spar?"

If he's surprised at the question, Yuan doesn't show it. "You should be asking yourself that question."

"I know the answer." Botta flicks his sword a little with his right hand, and though he has to make a conscious decision to keep his weight centered, not favoring the right side over the left, he wants to push himself. Wants to see how far he has to go.

Yuan's teeth flash in a facsimile of a smile. "What are you waiting for then?"

Yuan doesn't go easy on him, and Botta appreciates it. Appreciates it every time he feels the light whack from the flat of a blade, or the sturdier pop with the center of the staff. He will be bruised tomorrow, he can tell, but he manages to get a hit in every now and again. Finally, he goes down and he can feel the heaviness in every corner of his body, and he surrenders.

Yuan sits down cross-legged beside him, pushing his hair from his face. "Are you alright?"

"Peachy," Botta tells him, closing his eyes. The lights are too bright to look at right now.

They stay where they are, regaining their breath and their energy, for long moments. Botta wonders why Yuan hangs around, honestly. That spar couldn't have tired him out.

Yuan breaks the silence first. Sometimes, Botta wonders if the man has problems with silence, if the heavy ones remind him too much of Derris-Kharlan. "Of all people," he begins, "Why did you want to spar me?"

"Why not you?"

"That's not an answer. Any of the Renegades would have been happy to spar with you, and if you were worried about them holding back, there are still some who wouldn't have. So why me?"

Why me. Isn't that always the question? But Botta doesn't quite know how to frame his answer, doesn't quite know how to put a vague fear in the back of his mind into words. He has nightmares, sometimes. Of waking up and being utterly unable to move. That _this_ is the dream, and in reality, he's lying permanently, and fully paralyzed on an infirmary bed. He remembers several nights ago, when one of Triet's rare storms came through, and he'd flinched at the lightning strikes, at the rumble of thunder.

"…I needed to prove something to myself," Botta tells him finally. He opens his eyes, turning his head to look at Yuan properly.

He looks ancient, the millennia of weariness lying heavy across his shoulders, his eyes so old in the young face. "And what would that be?"

"That I wasn't afraid."

A moment of confusion. "Of me?"

_(The idea was mind-boggling to Yuan. From the day they'd met, all those decades ago on the docks, Botta had never been afraid of him. Had never feared his temper or his responses or his abilities. He'd simply stood his ground, as though anything that Yuan could or would do to him would simply pass over him, like a breeze over a mountain)_

Botta's mouth twists a little. "Not quite." He turns his head, looking back up at the ceiling. "…Do you remember that storm that came through?"

"From this past week? Of course."

It takes Botta moment to try to figure out how to properly explain his thoughts. "…I grew up on the ocean. I've passed through maelstroms, waited out hurricanes. Storms have never bothered me. And yet, this week, I couldn't sleep."

"And it was from fear," Yuan guesses.

"Yes."

"You wanted someone who can conjure lightning."

Botta nods. "I needed to know if my fear is temporary or not. If it's something that will stop me being able to fight."

"Only if you let it." The way Yuan says it, quiet, full of conviction, makes Botta wonder what Yuan is afraid of, what keeps him awake on nights when he wants to sleep, despite the fact that he doesn't need it. "Fear is something conquerable."

Botta hums, thinking of standing before the person who is arguably the most powerful thunder mage in both worlds and his knees hadn't trembled, his muscles hadn't frozen. "I think so too."

_(What neither of them would say was that there was a flaw in Botta's plan, an extra variable. Yuan was not a wild thunderstorm to face, was no enemy set out to hurt him. Botta trusted him. With everything. His life, the lives of his comrades, the worlds, the future. It was a kind of trust that didn't leave room for fear)_

* * *

He's shaken awake, a boy's voice in his ear. "Botta, sir! Wake up!"

It takes him a moment to recognize Ishmael, one of the newer children on base. "What's happened?" he asks, sitting up and testing his leg. It still feels asleep and he hates that he can't rush these things.

"It's Ozette, sir. It's gone."

Botta blinks at him. "Gone?"

"Yessir. It's been destroyed by Cruxis."

Botta stands up a bit too quickly and he has to hobble a little to find a shirt, but he's recovering faster now, feeling returning to his leg much easier. "Where's Yuan?"

Ishmael's bites his lip, looking a little awkward due to a recently fallen tooth. "He's on Derris-Kharlan."

Of course he would be. "Who brought the report?"

"Uncle did. He's upstairs, in room—" His nose scrunches in thought. "One, seven, one."

"Alright. You head on back to bed. I'll take care of this."

"Okay."

When Botta enters the room, Lucas is there. He's been doing a lot of computer work lately, on account of his back still not being fully healed. But, at the very least, he can walk, and he's even managed light jogs recently. "What happened?"

Lucas pulls up something on a screen. They'd had a safehouse in Ozette, of course. One could never be too safe. "This is all the footage we have right now."

The camera looks out past the main square, in front of the inn, and towards the town entrance. At first, all that plays is nothing out of the ordinary. Guards doing their rounds, a few drinkers leaving the inn leaning on one another. But when Lucas fast forwards the video a few hours, Botta stares as figure lands on one of the thick tree branches, the ones that the people use as walkways. He can make out wings, but he not much else, not from this distance. The next moment, light falls from the sky, and the video shorts out.

"What was that?" Lucas asks, turning his chair slowly to look at Botta, unwilling or unable to twist his back.

"Judgment, I would imagine. A very high-levelled light spell." Botta leans forward to turn on the overhead microphone. "Attention, all Renegades. Attention. We have received video footage and intel that the town of Ozette in Tethe'alla has been destroyed. I am sending Squads three and four to Ozette to search for survivors. I repeat, squads three and four are to search for survivors."

Once Botta has turned off the microphone, Lucas asks quietly, "You don't really believe that you'll find any, do you?"

"I have to try."

* * *

Yuan returns the next day, eyes looking hollow. He sits and sips at an herbal tea, listening to Botta update him on what's happened. "I'd call off the squads," Yuan says. "There won't be any survivors."

"Some could have fled into the forest or—"

Yuan shakes his head. "There's no warning, with a Judgment spell. You saw it on tape. There was no chance for anyone to run."

"And if someone wasn't in the village? They might come back, and they'll find their entire town destroyed."

"Yggdrasill will be sending his angels to double check for any survivors and I don't want any of the Renegades there when he does."

Botta narrows his eyes at him. "Why were you on Derris-Kharlan? Did Yggdrasill send for you?"

"Yggdrasill wasn't even there. There's more to this right now than mindless cruelty. Yggdrasill went to Ozette himself to destroy it." Botta remembers the figure that had landed on the video. "This was something more personal—I'm not sure what—and he wanted the entire town to pay the price for it."

"You don't seem particularly shook up."

The smile that crosses Yuan's face is mirthless and bitter. "I wish I could say I was. We were lucky this time; none of our people were there. As for the people of Ozette, I can't say with any honesty that I'll miss them."

Botta has heard the stories from Tethe'allans, has heard of the cruelty, hatred, and disgust for half-elves to be found in Ozette, but even so… "They didn't deserve to die."

"We will have to agree to disagree on that point."

"Yuan—you don't get to make the decisions on who lives and who dies. Otherwise, you're no better than Yggdrasill."

Botta forces himself not to flinch away at the sudden sharp, electric look in Yuan's eyes. "You think I don't know that? I didn't make this decision. If I'd been able to stop it, I would have. But don't expect me to mourn people who did nothing, but make our people suffer."

"I thought the point was to not make this about race anymore. The Renegades are a haven for humans _and_ half-elves. We're fighting for something better."

The soft laugh that comes out of Yuan sounds like broken glass, his eyes flinty. _(In that moment, Botta was staring at a ghost. A ghost of a War long since over)_ "You're a better person than I am, Botta. I am fighting for that ideal—I've been fighting for it longer than you've been alive—but you're more forgiving than I can ever be. Than I ever _was_. I'll fight for the humans, and for the half-elves, and the dwarves, and the elves. I will fight until there is nothing left of my body, but don't expect me to forgive them for the things they've done."

* * *

"We have confirmation from Palmacosta that Lloyd and the others are going to the Palmacosta Ranch tomorrow. Guards from Palmacosta have seen us salvaging parts from the ruins. They're afraid that the Desians are returning to the area."

"A natural assumption. And they're sending the Chosen out to investigate, I assume?"

"Yessir." Yuan and Botta haven't been on great terms since the destruction of Ozette. They've been more professional lately, regressing back to something easier. "I believe this is our opportunity to get into the ranch. Rodyle will be distracted by them—and they can certainly handle infiltrating ranches—while we take care of getting to the mana reactor."

"You couldn't find another way in?"

"Unless you feel like breaking a glass dome and airdropping us from the Rheairds into the dragons' enclosure, no."

"Gather the people you need. We'll meet them at the ranch."

* * *

Botta doesn't often set foot in the human ranches. Before this, he'd only ever been to Magnius', undercover for a few weeks, very early on. Rodyle's ranch feels a dozen times worse than Magnius' ever did. The fact that the entrance is underground doesn't help; Botta feels a bit claustrophobic as the sky disappears, into the cavern that houses the ranch.

They work quickly once they reach the mana reactor towards the back of the ranch, not needing to talk very much to do this. Even Marc doesn't make any smartass comments, even though Botta kind of wishes he would, just to break the tension. Recalibrating the mana reactor is easy work, and Botta wants to leave once they're done, let Lloyd and the others finish their end of the bargain. But that's not how alliances work, he thinks, and they make their way up through the ranch.

There are plenty of Desians on the way up, but most are either dead, or well on their way. Botta keeps walking, but he sees the way that the others—particularly Xinghua—glance back at their bodies. Most of the released prisoners are already well past them. They're nearing the upper levels when an alarm sounds.

Botta glances up, the loud, high-pitched sound echoing in the metal corridors. "That's likely the self-destruct system."

"Sir—Botta." He turns towards Xinghua. "…We're not going to make it out of this, are we?"

Botta looks down, past the stairs to the open spaces below. The last failsafe of the ranch—the flood—had been activated. It wouldn't harm the mana reactor, but the prisoners weren't shouting or crying anymore. The ranch had gone quiet. _(Drowned people didn't make sounds)_

He wants to lie to her. Wants to tell her that they'll make it out okay, that they'll be home in time for breakfast tomorrow, and they'll go over to Flanoir and have Oz make them the French toast that Delia attempts, but always burns, and they'll eat it with fruit pies, and they'll curl up in front of that roaring fireplace until they're toasty and warm.

But she knows the truth just as much as he does. "…No. I don't think we are."

The seawater is creeping up the stairs. Xinghua smiles bravely at him, even though it's wobbly around the edges. "It's been a pleasure, sir."

Marc matches her smile, saluting sloppily. "Indeed it has."

The sweater is brushing the bottoms of their boots. "We're not dead yet, and the mission isn't over. Save the sentimentality."

That makes Marc laugh, and Botta ignores the edge of hysteria to it even as he urges them to run, despite the weariness beginning to set into their limbs.

They storm into the control room and Raine Sage is at one of the consoles, trying to stop the alarm, but this control room is meant for multiple engineers. "We'll take over from here," Botta tells them. "You all escape through that hatch over there."

_(They would be safe there, relatively. Or at least, they had better odds. Dragons could be fought. You couldn't fight the ocean; Botta knew that better than anyone. His family had a history of dying in their line of work, as fishermen and dock workers and sailors. They'd been the rebel generation, him and Sirin, and Olanya. As the waters rose, soaking his boots, his ankles, his knees, Botta only had the thought that maybe he wasn't much of a rebel after all. The ocean would still take him, even after all he'd done trying to avoid it. Just like Olanya was taken by fire, and Sirin by her own cleverness. Maybe Fate did exist)_

"Done!" Marc exclaims, the last codes being typed in.

Botta looks out the window; they're staring at him in horror and even a bit of outrage. They'd realized what they'd done then, locking themselves in. He wades to the overhead speaker, clicking it on. "We've stopped the self-destruct system."

Marc and Xinghua are climbing up the stairs to the highest ground. Not that it'll help in the end. Botta follows. Lloyd is shouting at him, still trying to save him.

"Our goal was to modify each ranch's mana reactor in order to fire mana at the Great Seed. Now that we've finished reprogramming this control room, our mission is complete. We need you to get the message to Yuan that we have succeeded."

"Tell him yourself!" Lloyd shouts defiantly.

"We pray for your success in regenerating the world." Who they're praying to is a question that Botta doesn't have an answer for. He doesn't believe in a Goddess. Are the Summon Spirits still listening to any prayers? Is there another higher being out there? Perhaps Undine will take pity on them, Botta thinks as the waters rise. Perhaps she'll drown them quickly.

"Please see to it that Martel is allowed her eternal sleep, for Yuan's sake as well."

He hopes it will grant Yuan some kind of peace. Let it give him the peace of mind he needs to start a new life over. To let the world start over.

* * *

_It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death, and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say there was little to choose between the two, but Dumbledore knew-and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents-that there was all the difference in the world._

_\--Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling_

* * *

 


End file.
